As part of our new “Historical Perspectives” series, we reached out to Kirk Hastings, president of the Wildwood Crest Historical Society. Kirk literally wrote the book on a particular subject in the history of the Wildwoods and was kind enough to share with us this excerpt from “Doo Wop Motels: Architectural Treasures of The Wildwoods.” We hope you enjoy!
I was extremely fortunate growing up. By the time I was out of elementary school I had already seen many of the most exotic, interesting places of the world: Tahiti, Hawaii, Aruba, Waikiki, the Caribbean, Tangiers, Key West, Montego Bay—just to name a few.
I was also privileged enough to have been able to see Monaco, the Acropolis, the Alps, Athens, Barcelona, the Coliseum, Madrid, the Mediterranean, Nantucket, Nassau, Quebec, and the Sahara.
And in the process I never even left southern New Jersey!
How is that possible, you might ask?
I grew up in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey. Wildwood Crest is one of four adjacent, similarly-named towns located on a small, seven-mile-long barrier island situated near the southern tip of New Jersey. The other towns are Wildwood, North Wildwood and West Wildwood, and collectively they are all known as The Wildwoods.
All of those foreign, romantic places that I saw were there, back in the 1960s when I was growing up. And many of them are still there today.
They are all imaginatively designed tourist motels!
Some of Wildwood’s motels were built during the post-World War II decade of the 1950s, but most of them were built in the early to mid-1960s. Later on, in the 1980s and 1990s, their unique building style became famous throughout America, known as “Googie” architecture on the West Coast and eventually as “Doo Wop” on the East Coast.
But to me, growing up, they were just a lot of really interesting, unusual buildings, built during a decade of tremendous cultural creativity.
I spent many a warm summer evening strolling down Ocean Avenue in the Crest (one block west of the Atlantic Ocean), where most of that town’s motels were located. During the summer months this avenue was always active and alive with the hustle and bustle of vacationing tourists and families enjoying themselves at their own particular motel. Cars featuring license plates from practically every state in the country were parked everywhere. Brightly illuminated neon signs lit up the night in a kaleidoscope of bright colors and futuristic designs. Even the air in the Crest’s motel district possessed its own particular ambiance—a combination of the distinctive smell of chlorine (from the many motel swimming pools there), and the fresh, salty ocean air.
These structures are actually a lot more than just buildings. They are many different things all at the same time:
- They are imagination run wild, with their soaring ramps and crazy angles.
- They are visual wonders, with their boomerang roofs, slanted walls and kidney-shaped swimming pools.
- They are nostalgia, reminding us of a simpler, more optimistic time in our history.
- Their plastic palm trees give us a sense of the exotic and the tropical in a place that can get very cold in the wintertime!
But most of all, they are fun. Yes, a building can be fun! Not many are. There is a magic there that is hard to explain to someone who (for whatever reason) just doesn’t get it.
Day-to-day life never seems to have nearly enough magic in it. But once in a while a little piece of it manages to break through into our lives. And when it does, it is always tremendously welcome and pleasant.
For more information about history in Wildwood Crest, visit their Historical Society online at www.cresthistory.org, and click here to find Kirk Hasting’s book, “Doo Wop Motels: Architectural Treasures of The Wildwoods.”
To purchase his DVD, “Doo Wop Motels of the Wildwoods,” click here!