“Pool Club Row” in Long Branch
Pool & Surf Swimming in the City … Times 3
The old Long Branch pier and boardwalk area — in all its guises — is still a fresh memory for many locals. But precious few can recall the three pool clubs that flourished in that very same beachfront neighborhood for over 70 summers.
Located on Ocean Avenue between Chelsea and Laird Avenues were three large pool/surf bathing facilities — Cranmer’s Baths, Chelsea Baths and Columbia Baths. From early in the 20th century to the mid-1970s these “pool clubs” were fabulously popular with city residents, families, and locals.
It was here, arguably, that the Jersey Shore’s first large public pools were built. By Summer 1901, according to the Long Branch Daily Record, the city had “the finest bathing pavilions along the Jersey coast.” They offered swimming pools, bathhouses, and beach access via tunnels under the street and boardwalk for a quick ocean dip. Privately-owned but open to the public, daily passes were sold at the door. The clubs rented swimsuits and towels to day-trippers. “Sneak-ins” between the clubs was city summer lore.
All three clubs sought to keep up with the times and growing patronage. It worked — each reveled during 1930s to 1960s summers. The friendly confines of their large pool decks brimming with happy and content bathers and sun worshipers — on some banner weekends beach chairs and towels nearly on top of each other. Due to such popular appeal the clubs hired the city’s first private lifeguards — with reports of “saves” at Cranmer’s as early as July 1908, according to the Long Branch Daily Record.
Opened summers June to September, from 7:30 am to 10 pm — daily admission never reached $1 — city parents and families loved the pool clubs.
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• Cranmer’s Baths
Isaac H. Cranmer — “Ocean Avenue’s bathing master” — started operations in the area about 1878, according to the Long Branch Daily Record. He had learned the trade by running the bathing operations at the old United States Hotel nearby.
After his first ornate “bathhouse” on the east side of Ocean Avenue was “washed away” in the Great Storm of 1893, he moved operations across the street. Starting out he rented (1901) and then acquired (1921) land owned by Catholic University of America (a college in Washington, DC) for $30,000. There he built his pool club. He built an underground walking tunnel in 1901 — the first in the area — connecting the pool with the beach and ocean. At the start of swimming in Long Branch, “a bathing suit looked like an overcoat,” Isaac admitted.
In 1903 Cranmer opened the area’s first “modern swimming pool” (37-feet x 80-feet). After calling the 1925 Long Branch summer “the largest turnout” in his 45+ seasons there, a modern new pool was opened for the following summer (built by Louis Sieling of Red Bank). In peak seasons, the pool was filled and drained of salt water daily. After Isaac died in June 1931, his son, Ralph, ran the pool club until 1948. Ralph, who served in the US Navy during WW I, died in August 1955.
This “pioneering establishment on the North Jersey coast,” according to a 1940 Long Branch Daily Record story, was fabulously popular. Every summer season you could be sure that the Cranmers’ were improving the club. It helped that the family owned a lumber yard on Chelsea Avenue. Cranmer’s also reportedly kept the city’s cleanest beaches and was one of the first to offer multi-colored sun umbrellas.
M. Benjamin Cittadino paid $75,000 for the club in October 1948 and kept the sun and fun going. By then the club had 1,100 lockers and two swimming pools. The club’s popular owner for 30 years, “Bennie” passed away in 1981. By 1967, Pat Cicalese owned the facility. He’d go on to make big changes.
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• Chelsea Baths
Upon its grand opening nearly a century ago — according to the Long Branch Daily Record — “no expense was spared” to make the establishment the state’s best in 1925. By the 1930s, postcards were boasting that Chelsea Baths had “the largest swimming pool on the Jersey Coast.”
Dating to 1916, this land “west of the boardwalk” had several owners: Citizens National Bank, then Peters Realty, then Louis Procter and then JAC Corp. Prior to Chelsea Baths, the property had housed a roller-skating rink and merry-go-round since 1908. It was wrecked to build the club.
In July 1925, the new baths (including refreshment stand, laundry, 750 lockers and 30 showers) opened at the corner of Ocean and Chelsea Avenues. Founding owner-developers were Daniel Maher (then pier owner and later city mayor) and Andrew Lustbaum (pioneering city auto dealer and mechanic). In June 1927, an all-concrete pool (136 x 60 feet in dimension and 3- to 10-feet in depth) was opened — it was the largest on the NJ coast. The club grew to 1,200 bathhouses in 1929 and a second pool was added in the 1940s.
The Procter family — then the city’s most respected big-ticket contracting firm — was involved at the Chelsea pool club by the 1930s, according to the Long Branch Daily Record. Louis H. Procter, who took full control of the club in 1949 and ran it for a about a dozen summers, had acquired it from his brother William, who’d been club president since 1930.
Chelsea Baths had its own “tunnel to the beach” — 7 1/2-feet high and 110-feet long that opened in 1925. The club also had “Pauline’s” — a snackbar run by Pauline Manetti. Chelsea Baths across the street beach was well-guarded and busy. Tom Armstrong managed the Chelsea pool club and its swim team for more than 25 summers. A prolific city businessman and WW II US Army vet, he died in July 1985.
Anthony “Pistol Pete” Cicalese and his son Patsy acquired Chelsea Baths in September 1962 from Louis Procter. By 1969, they’d own most of the surrounding area. Later called Chelsea Swim Club, the facility was reconfigured and absorbed into a water-park with slide that opened for Summer 1978.
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• Columbia Baths
Opened in June 1901, Robert Tappin and Morris Burns built the club for $15,000 and were early proprietors. Leon Cubberley was architect on the Colonial-design Ocean Avenue building. The Columbia specialty was hot salt water baths — along with its 90,000-gallon open-air pool.
Both men were connected — having been members of the Long Branch Commission. Tappin, a leading local builder, worked at “Grant Cottage” and became a presidential buddy. He also built the New York & Long Branch Railroad headquarters on Third Avenue in 1891. He died in Oct. 1928.
An underground tunnel connecting the club to the beach was built in 1906 by Garrett Hennessey. For Summer 1933 two new ocean-water feed pools, adult and child, were added along with high springboards. There also was a room for massage, manicuring and hair-dressing staffed by experts.
Russian-born Samuel Wolf came to Long Branch in 1907 and within 10 years had acquired Columbia Baths. He ran the club until his death in February 1933. Among the owners were William H. VanHise (1910) and Lewis H. Proctor (sold in 1962).
By the early-1960s, the Cicalese family owned the club; calling it Columbia Health Spa.
Long Branch Community Pool