West Side Restaurant
Known Name(s)
West Side Restaurant
Address
1136 Springwood Ave. Asbury Park, NJ
Establishment Type(s)
Restaurant
Physical Status
Demolished
Description
According to the 1930 Sanborn insurance map, 1136 Springwood Avenue was a long, narrow, wood frame structure on the south side of Springwood Avenue, the main business artery on Asbury Park’s West Side (https://tinyurl.com/SpringwoodAveHeritageWalk). The entire block was demolished, and recently built townhomes now occupy the space.
Source: Sanborn Map Co., Insurance Maps of New Jersey Coast, New Jersey, Vol. 2 (1930), sheet 202.
Detailed History
The West Side Dining Room at 1136 Springwood Avenue in Asbury Park was listed in The Green Book for the entire run of the publication.
Polk’s Asbury Park City Directory indicated that the longtime West Side institution was owned and operated in the 1940s and 1950s by Albert J. and Mabel L. Moore. The West Side Dining Room joined other business owners on and around Springwood Avenue in a prominent 1940 advertisement in The Asbury Park Press that urged locals, and African Americans in particular, to patronize their “approved” West Side establishments, rather than be “fooled by downtown propaganda” into traveling east of the railroad tracks to spend their money. Mr. Moore was remembered, with his death at 95 in 1974, as one of Asbury’s oldest living businessmen and life member of the NAACP. Born in Virginia, he retired in 1963, having lived at the Jersey shore for 74 years. Mrs. Moore, also born in Virginia, died in 1994 at the age of 95, and also was remembered as the restaurant’s proprietor.
It appears that the business was then bought and operated by Barbara L. Brown, who was born in Georgia and moved to the shore in 1948. At her death at 90 in 2000, she was remembered for the pastries she served at the West Wide Dining Room. She operated the restaurant with her husband, William “Chef” Brown, who died in 1975.
Sources: Polk’s Asbury Park City Directory, 1945, 1948, and 1950; “Albert J. Moore, Had Restaurant,” Asbury Park Press, 5 April 1974; “Barbara L. Brown,” Asbury Park Press, 5 November 2000; “Mabel L. Moore,” Asbury Park Press, 30 December 1994; “William R. Brown,” Asbury Park Press, 5 July 1975; “Shop in Springwood Ave. Stores with Confidence. You are Guaranteed: QUALITY MERCHANDISE – LOW PRICES – FAIR DEALING,” Asbury Park Press, 31 May 1940.
J. Shaffer
