Reevey's Hotel
Known Name(s)
Reevey's Hotel
Address
135 De Witt Ave. Asbury Park, NJ
Establishment Type(s)
Hotel
Physical Status
Demolished
Description
A 1952 article in the Asbury Park Press reporting a fire at 135 DeWitt stated that the building was an 11-room frame dwelling. The 1930 Sanborn insurance map indeed shows a long, narrow, two-story frame structure on the lot, the front half, numbered 135, with a porch that wrapped to the north, and the rear section numbered 135 ½. The house currently numbered 137 may be this srtructure, but that is unclear.
Sources: Sanborn Map Co., Insurance Maps of New Jersey Coast, New Jersey, Vol. 2 (1930), sheet 201; “City Firemen Quell 4 Fires,” Asbury Park Press, 4 May 1952.
Detailed History
A long-time listing, Reevy’s, at 135 DeWitt Avenue, was in the residential section of Asbury Park, north of Springwood Avenue on the predominantly African-American West Side.
The address is associated with Anna and Ralph Reevey – note the different spelling – in city directories, though it is not listed as a hotel. 135 DeWitt is described as a rooming house owned by Mr. Reevey in a 1952 newspaper article reporting a fire there. Mrs. Reevey was born in Brooklyn in 1902 and died in 1968 in Asbury Park, having lived there for 52 years. Her husband was born in Asbury Park, and died there in 1956, having spent the past half-century as a carpenter and plumber in town. Both Mr. And Mrs. Reevey were active in St. Stephen’s AME Zion Church in Asbury, as well as in local lodges and clubs.
Sources: Polk’s Asbury Park City Directory, 1940; US census, 1940; “City Firemen Quell 4 Fires,” Asbury Park Press, 4 May 1952; “Mrs. Ralph Reevey,”Asbury Park Press. 2 January 1968; “Ralph Reevey,” Asbury Park Press, 15 October 1956.
J. Shaffer
