“New Jersey”

This Old House

Another example of an old-style Sea Isle house, this one with 3 stories, though, and a garret.

My wife has been taking me down the shore to Sea Isle City for 25 years now. When I was first going down there most of the homes were a bit older, 2-story structures up a couple of steps to a front porch. There were still a bunch of the previous generation, single-story houses around. One of the charms of the town wass it’s faintly blue-collar, Catholic feel, so different from the patrician Hamptons of Long Island. Then, some years ago, the old places all started getting pulled down and replaced with 3-story-double houses with no living quarters on the ground level, just garages and boilers and storage. And since then, this third generation has started sprouting a new cohort of 4-story variants. And while the town has clearly been getting wealthier, it has lost some of its older charm (OTOH, it is finally getting a tad more diverse and colorful, which is a nice change). This year I thought I would document some of the older 1 and 2-story homes before they all disappear.