Priscilla's Beauty Parlor
Known Name(s)
Priscilla's Beauty Parlor
Address
261 Myrtle Ave. Neptune, NJ
Establishment Type(s)
Beauty Parlor
Physical Status
Extant
Description
Priscilla’s Beauty Parlor was located at 261 Myrtle Avenue in Neptune, just south of Springwood Avenue, the West Side’s main business corridor. The 1930 Sanborn insurance map depicted the structure as a narrow, two-story, frame dwelling fronted by a one-story porch, with a rectilinear bump out on the south elevation towards the rear. The early twentieth-century house, still a residence, is extant, the porch enclosed and topped by a second-story enclosed space.
Source: Sanborn Map Co., Insurance Maps of New Jersey Coast, New Jersey, Vol. 2 (1930), sheet 248.
Detailed History
Priscilla’s, on Myrtle Avenue in Neptune just off busy Springwood Avenue, was one a number of beauty parlors listed on the predominantly African-American West Side. According to her obituary, the owner, born Marion Priscilla Lewis in Newark, spent most of her life in Neptune. The 1945 Polk’s Asbury Park City Directory indicated that she lived at 261 Myrtle, her mother’s home, before her 1946 marriage to John Wade. Mrs. Wade ran Priscilla’s, which existed before her marriage, out of 261 Myrtle, and listed her business in The Green Book from 1947 – the first year in which Neptune got its own designation apart from Asbury Park – through 1955. Mrs. Wade closed Priscilla’s around 1955, and then worked as a clerk at the Jersey Shore Medical Center for 22 years until her retirement in 1976.
Mrs. Wade’s passion was music, evidenced by notices of her activities in the Asbury Park Press. A soprano, she gave her first solo recital in New York in 1934. She was a member and also director of the choir at the Mt. Pisgah Baptist Temple in Asbury Park, and directed part of the Ocean Grove Choir Festival in 1972.
Sources: Polk’s Asbury Park City Directory, 1945; “Miss Lewis Bride of J. J. Wade, Jr.,” Asbury Park Press, 10 February 1946; “Marion P. Lewis Wade,” Asbury Park Press, 14 April 1983; “Wade – Lewis,” Asbury Park Press, 10 January 1946; “Testimonial,” Asbury Park Press, 4 June 1976.
J. Shaffer
