Mrs. S. Wilks Tourist Home
Known Name(s)
Mrs. S. Wilks Tourist Home
Address
1112 Mattison Ave. Asbury Park, NJ
Establishment Type(s)
Tourist Home
Physical Status
Demolished
Description
1112 Mattison Avenue was in the residential district north of Springwood Avenue on Asbury Park’s predominantly African-American West Side. The 1930 Sanborn map records 1110-1112 Mattison as a rambling frame building made up of two long, narrow, offset rectangles, with a one-story porch as it faced the street. The block was later demolished and the streets reconfigured, with 1112 Mattison now part of the grounds of Asbury Park Middle School. The location of the address is very approximate on the map.
Source: Sanborn Map Co., Insurance Maps of New Jersey Coast, New Jersey, Vol. 2 (1930), sheet 204.
Detailed History
Sadie A. Gray Wilkes (in sources, her name sometimes has an “e,” and sometimes does not) ran a boarding house at 1112 Mattison, and listed her business from 1938 until 1940 in The Green Book.
According to the 1920 census, Mrs. Wilkes was an African-American woman born in Virginia in about 1880; she and her husband, Alexander, lived on Mattison with her father and a number of boarders. It is unknown what happened to Alexander. Mrs. Wilkes died in 1940, and left her house at 1112 Mattison to two women friends from New York City. One of them, Mrs. Bessie Jones, was listed as living at the address in the 1940 Polk’s Asbury Park City Directory.
Sources: US census, 1920; Polk’s Asbury Park City Directory, 1937 and 1940; “Friends Willed City Property,” Asbury Park Press, 30 March 1940; “Mrs. Sadie Wilks,” Asbury Park Press, 14 March 1940.
J. Shaffer
