Hotel Royal
Known Name(s)
Royal Hotel () Hotel Royal ()
Address
216 3rd Ave. Asbury Park, NJ (1954, 1955, 1956)216 3rd Avenue Asbury Park, NJ (1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962)
Establishment Type(s)
Hotel
Physical Status
Demolished
Description
The Royal, at 216 3rd Avenue (not Street, as recorded in The Green Book entries) was typical for Asbury Park’s grand hotels. Known from the 1930 Sanborn map as well as postcard and newspaper images, the old structure, by around the mid-twentieth century, was a large, rambling, frame building which filled its long, narrow lot. Fronted by a deep, wrap-around porch, the building was four stories tall in the front, three towards the middle, and two at the rear, with classicizing forms and details. It is unclear when the hotel was demolished and who owned it at that time. The address today is an empty lot.
Source: Sanborn Map Co., Insurance Maps of New Jersey Coast, New Jersey, Vol. 2 (1930), sheet 221.
Detailed History
The Royal was listed as a hotel in The Green Book from 1954 through 1957, and also as a vacation resort from 1957 through 1962.
The establishment has the distinction of being the single Green Book listing in Asbury Park that is east of the railroad tracks. Located at 216 3rd Avenue, far from the predominantly African-American West Side, the Royal was on the second beach block, just a short walk to Asbury’s famed boardwalk and the ocean. A 1949 article in The New York Age cited “new Civil Rights law in Jersey” and the “untiring efforts of Asbury Park citizens” for making the town a vacation destination for African Americans. The article cited the 3rd Ave. beach as open to all, underscoring the attraction of the Royal’s location for African-American clientele.
That an establishment in the traditionally White section of town explicitly welcomed African Americans is made all the more remarkable as the Royal was under the direction of an African-American woman. The large hotel, which had existed since the early decades of the century under various names and owners, was purchased in 1953 by the Burtonia Corporation, headed by Mrs. Prudence Burton Black. A pioneering African-American businesswoman, Mrs. Black, born in South Carolina, lived in Mount Vernon, New York; she died in 1995 at the age of 92 in White Plains, New York. Mrs. Burton, who founded the National Council of Negro Business and Professional Women, had opened the Crotona Hotel in the Bronx a few years before the acquisition of the Royal. A pamphlet, created for the opening of the Royal in 1953 and addressed to the African-American community, highlighted the historic nature of the change in management, stating, “This is history in the making for our race and every effort should be made to be present at the opening. For this is an undertaking of Negros of such magnitude, never before attempted, and every effort is being made for your relaxation and comfort …”
The Royal sought African-American vacationers and positioned itself as a high-end destination. Ads for the “Hotel Royal and Royal Beach Club” ran in The New York Age in 1954, touting its proximity to New York and its “high class service.” In 1961, the Royal, still connected to Mrs. Burton, was presented in Ebony as serving a “distinguished interracial clientele.”
Yet, like the rest of the Jersey shore, the Royal appears to have suffered from the changing fortunes of the area as leisure choices expanded and changed. In 1958, the hotel advertised its “reasonable rates” in The New York Age, and, in 1961, in a classified in The Asbury Park Press, it advertised furnished rooms by the week for “respectable working people.”
Sources: “Asbury Park Ideal Vacation Spot Now,” The New York Age, 30 July 1949; “City Hotels Changing Hands,” Asbury Park Press, 24 May 1953; “Furnished Rooms,” Asbury Park Press, 8 August 1961; “Hotel Royal and Royal Beach Club,” The New York Age, 26 June 1954; “Hotel Royal,” Ebony, November 1961: 80; “Hotel Royal,” The New York Age, 21 June 1958; “Hotel Stages Opening Fete,” Asbury Park Press, 23 May 1953; “New York Group Purchases Hotel,” Asbury Park Press, 13 May 1953; “Open Crotona Hotel Annex,” The New York Age,” 15 December 1955; “Opening April 15, 1954,” The New York Age, 17 April 1954; “Prudence Black, retired real estate agent,” The Herald Statesman, 24 February 1995.
J. Shaffer
