I have featured this building in an older post, but it was dark, and you only see the side in that one. So here is the Jersey Shore Arts Center (which used to be the Neptune High School, as you can see) in Ocean Grove/Asbury Park.
Here’s what I wrote about it last June, ‘cos I’m sure you’ve forgotten it by now:
This is the Jersey Shore Arts Center, located in what you’d THINK would be Asbury Park, right outside Ocean Grove’s main gate… but is apparently Ocean Grove’s territory. It used to be the old Neptune high school, and it was hailed at the 1906 World’s Fair as “an architectural splendor,” but it died, as neglected buildings often do. In 1997, the Ocean Grove Historic Preservation Society began turning it into “a beautiful home for the cultural arts at the New Jersey shore.”
November 20, 2009 at 8:25 am
I atteneded school here. This also use to be Ocean Grove Middle School for years. I always thought it was a beautiful building. The floors were always gleaming. So much history here. I also remember having music in the fall-out shelter basement.
February 26, 2011 at 4:42 pm
I went there when it was a middle school for 5th and 6th grade.It was a great building but the floors would crack and squeek like crazy.I lunch in the basement and music class.There was also a janatore who used to make plastic paris stuff
March 7, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Am I, Don Kurtz Class of 1939, the oldest living Neptune High School graduate? How I loved the old Ocean Grove school grounds. Mr. Harry A. Titcomb was our principal and Mrs. Gordon, Miss Plummer, Mr. Little and Mr. Long were my all-time favorite teachers.
April 24, 2011 at 5:01 pm
Alla kanoo kanack kanack
Get out of the way of the Red and Black
Fight Team Fight!!
February 22, 2012 at 9:35 am
Hello the architect of this fine building is Samuel A Brouse. My great grand Uncle..His promising career ended too soon when he died at the age of 42.
June 6, 2012 at 6:20 pm
I went to this school for 5th and 6th grade. It had the original school building with a newer annex on the south side – both being connected by a corridor. The annex was just a typical school building – but the old High School was AMAZING!! It had a theater WITH A BALCONY!! It also had an upper level that was closed – used to have gables in the old days but they were gone when I went there. But you could still access the closed level from the theater/auditorium (staircase backstage). I was in the tracked honors 6th grade class (Mr. Spadeveccia) – the class was room 26 I think, you can see it in the picture above the main entrance – three windows side by side and one big one on the right. We used to sit on the heater duct in front of the big window – sometimes we would float papaer airplanes out the window to drift across Main Street. I remember there was a big lumber yard across the street by the railroad tracks that burned down one day – really big fire – melted cars parked on Main Street – burned down the old police station – leaving only two concrete cell blocks standing just across from the school.
Music in the basement – with fallout shelter signs everywere down thee – with Mrs Miller – very old – remember her rousing teaching of us singing “She’s a Grande Ole Flag”. Really old fashioned woman stepping right out of the past and into 1970′s. The school was just so beautiful – all of the student respected it – wood everywhere but initials only carved into desk tops. During fire drill, we had to actually use an old external iron fire escape on the outside of the north side of the building exiting onto the small asphalt playground where we played softball.
I tell my kids about this school all the time – I live in San Francisco area now – I left Jersey for good in 1985, but my brothers and sisters are still there – and I take my family there and always show them this school and relive stories of my time there with them.
Thank you for helping me relive this – the “memories so thick you have to brush them from your face”….
June 6, 2012 at 6:24 pm
Oh yeah – that music class in the basement???- you can see it in the photo above – lower right of the foudation, those windows were where the music class was – or where you went to DUCK AND COVER!!!!
November 17, 2012 at 1:15 am
Keven, I think I remember you. My name is Wayne Taylor. I was there in 73. Use to be in the main building (Pictured) in the first classroom as you went in on the right. RM 1 I THINK….! Anyway, had a WONDERFUL teacher who was a bit older then. Mr. Mudrick. Really a nice man. Even had Mrs. Harrington upstairs. I can remember every day going into school and seeing that old EST. 1897 sign over the main doors. I use to think….DAMN….is this place gonna hold up????LOL. As a student, I really liked that old school. And now being an old fart of 50, hard to imagine being 11 or 12 years old going there. GREAT memories.