Mrs. M. Wigfall Tourist Home
Known Name(s)
Mrs. M. Wigfall Tourist Home
Address
1112 Adams Ave. Asbury Park, NJ
Establishment Type(s)
Tourist Home
Physical Status
Demolished
Description
1112 Adams was located on a residential street one block south of Springwood Avenue, the main street running through Asbury Park’s predominantly African-American West Side. The 1930 Sanborn insurance map depicts both 1112 and 1114 Adams (see history for address issues) as wood frame houses with a one-story front porches. The location of 1112-1114 Adams on the map is approximate, as the lots are now part of a parking lot for an apartment complex that replaced that side of the block of Adams in the early 1940s.
Source: Sanborn Map Co., Insurance Maps of New Jersey Coast, New Jersey, Vol. 2 (1930), sheet 202.
Detailed History
The tourist home listed under Mrs. Wigfall’s name at 1112 Adams from 1938 through 1940 is a bit of a mystery. It appears that the numbering of lots changed between the 1905 and 1930 Sanborn insurance maps. Mary J. Wigfall and her husband, James B. Wigfall, were listed as living at their boarding house at 1112 Adams in the 1926 Polk’s Asbury Park City Directory, and at 1114 Adams, which offered furnished rooms, in the 1931 directory, most likely indicating a renumbering of lots before 1930. The 1930 census recorded the Wigfalls as living at 1114 Adams and having a number of lodgers, with Mrs. Wigfall as the “lodging housekeeper.” Mrs. Wigfall, an African-American woman born in North Carolina in about 1868, died in 1934. In the 1937 city directory, both 1112 and 1114 were noted as vacant; by 1940, the block was slated for an apartment “project,” and all homes were demolished. It is therefore unclear who listed 1112 as a tourist home in The Green Book from 1938 through 1940.
Sources: Sanborn Map Co., Insurance Maps of New Jersey Coast, New Jersey, Vol. 2 (1905), sheet 44; Sanborn Map Co., Insurance Maps of New Jersey Coast, New Jersey, Vol. 2 (1930), sheet 202; Polk’s Asbury Park City Directory, 1926, 1931, and 1937; US Census, 1930; “Mrs. James Wigfall,” Asbury Park Press, 11 May 1934.
J. Shaffer
