The Bluffs
Bay Head, New Jersey

~ The Story Of A Hotel At The Jersey Shore ~

by Francine LaVance Robertshaw

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Reviews & Articles

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The Ocean Star

July 6, 2007

Author, locals share memories of The Bluffs in new book

By Andrea Agardy

In 1996, The Bluffs Hotel on East Avenue was demolished and shortly thereafter the property was occupied by single-family homes, closing the book on more than a century of history at the beachfront hotel and bar and leaving many longtime visitors searching for a new place to stay and a slew of locals in search of a new hangout.

But now, history buffs and former regulars at restaurant and bar can relive a bit of the past thanks to a new coffee table book written by Francine LaVance Robertshaw, simply entitled “The Bluffs.”

Ms. LaVance Robertshaw, 61, who now resides in California, was raised in Short Hills and summered in Bay Head with her family before moving there full-time back in 1967. It wasn’t long before Ms. LaVance Robertshaw found herself drawn to The Bluffs like so many before and after her. She began working at the hotel as a desk clerk and ended her eight-year tenure at the hotel as the assistant manager.

Despite moving to the West Coast in 1987 and starting a new career as a concierge at a large hotel there, Ms. LaVance Robertshaw never forgot her years at The Bluffs, and when she decided to try her hand as an author, choosing the subject for her first book was an easy decision.

“The Bluffs as it was, was inspiration enough, but knowing that I had many photographs, the treasured memorabilia and the stories in my head that I had learned… over the years of my employment there, I came to realize that no one else, other than a Johnson family member, might be able to do such a book,” Ms. LaVance Robertshaw said.

The book, which was published by Jersey Shore Publications, recounts the history of the hotel and bar from its construction in 1890 at the commission of Anna Martin Johnson through its demolition 11 years ago.

But the book is more than a recounting of the establishment’s history. It also includes Ms. LaVance Robertshaw’s personal recollections of her years there, as well as the favorite memories of many local residents. The third chapter of the book, appropriately entitled Memories, is a collection of essays from area residents and frequent guests at the inn who, at the author’s request, share tales of their favorite experiences and characters from The Bluffs.

“That’s really my favorite part of the book,” she said. “I wish there were more… Before I started writing I knew I wanted that part [the memories chapter]. Everyone I knew had stories.”

Ms. LaVance Robertshaw said she particularly enjoyed hearing the same story from several different people, told a little differently each time from a unique perspective.

While she welcomed stories from patrons of The Bluffs, the author said, at times, getting people to share those memories proved to be a bit of a challenge.

“Sometimes getting people to share memories was a long process,” she said. “They were shy about writing them down, I don’t know why. Some of my closest friends took a long time to do it.”

Nevertheless, the author said the stories she received were well worth the wait. She said she is hoping even more people will be willing to share their memories of The Bluffs with her. Should a second edition of the book be printed in the future, she said he hopes to expand upon the memories section. The author can be contacted by sending an e-mail to FrancineR349@aol.com.

Scattered throughout the book are photographs of The Bluffs and its guests throughout its history, as well as reproductions of artistic renderings of the building by well-known local artists and copies of memos to the staff from the owners and management. Many of these mementos came from Ms. LaVance Robertshaw’s personal collection of Bluffs memorabilia, while others were lent to the author by members of the Johnson family, which owned and operated the hotel for decades.

“I had a vision of a very beautiful book and the one person I wanted to publish it was George Valente [Jersey Shore Publications]… I give full credit for the design to George and art director Judy Cardella,” Ms. LaVance Robertshaw said.

Since the book arrived in area stores in early June, Ms. LaVance Robertshaw said she has received many compliments on her effort.

She said many people have told her “This is the most beautiful book I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m delighted,” the author said.

There were so many remaining artifacts from her years at The Bluffs that her publisher quickly decided to add an appendix to the book to share her collection with readers.

The appendix also includes floor plans for the hotel and its annex, a reproduction of a map of the Barnegat Bay region drawn in the 1936 by Harry Tower Jr., replicas of a 1910 brochure for the hotel and menus from 1942 to 1952, among many other documents and reproductions sure to bring a smile to the faces of history buffs and former Bluffs patrons.

“It started when George wanted a pocket for the Bloody Mary recipe and he ran with it,” Ms. LaVance Robertshaw said. “They did the most beautiful job, I could not be more thrilled. It’s almost like a pop-up book for adults with the wonderful treats in the back.”

Ms. LaVance Robertshaw will return to Bay Head next month for a pair of events at the historical society museum at the intersection of Bay and Bridge avenues. On Aug. 4 from 5 to 8 p.m., the historical society will host a fund-raiser dubbed “One Last Call,” where Ms. LaVance Robertshaw will be signing copies of her book. Tickets for the event are $40 apiece and are limited to four per purchaser. They are available now at Applegate’s Hardware and The Jolly Tar.

The following day, on Aug. 5, the historical society’s exhibit, “The Bluffs 1890-1995” will open to the public, free of charge, from 1 to 4 p.m. and the author will once again be on hand at the museum to meet readers and sign copies of her book.

Ms. LaVance Robertshaw said she welcomes the opportunity to return to the Jersey Shore.

“The book put me back in touch with people I’d lost touch with and enabled me to meet so many people I didn’t know,” she said. “I am so looking forward to returning to Bay Head.”

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The Ocean County Observer

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The Point Pleasant Reporter

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Asbury Park Press

July 27, 2007

Remembering The Bluffs

Book memorializes a great time at a grand old Victorian hotel complex at the Shore

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 07/27/07

BY KIRK MOORE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU

BAY HEAD — Even in its last years, The Bluffs seemed to be the hotel that time forgot.

There was the widower who threw a cocktail party in the hotel's Green Room every August, buying corsages and personally pinning them on each female guest as they arrived.

An old-fashioned bell system let guests order buckets of ice up to their rooms. Oceanfront rooms with porches were the prized locations, rented year after year. Guests had to wait for someone to die before they could upgrade their location.

The hotel felt more like a family home, author Francine LaVance Robertshaw says. There was her mother's cousin Dolly, who'd spent 21 summers in the same room, and the downstairs bar, where Robertshaw first went at age 21 under the wing of her brother Bud and his friends.

"It just became a really comfortable place to be. It felt like you were in dad's basement," Robertshaw said. "One day in the winter of 1979 there was a sign on the blackboard for a desk clerk.

"I asked the bar manager, and he told me to go see Mr. Johnson," the owner, Robertshaw said. "I suppose I was thinking, well, I might as well work, since I'm here all the time, anyway."

Nearly 30 years and a career in the hospitality business later, Robertshaw has come back to Bay Head with a book about The Bluffs, celebrating a way of life that's all but disappeared from the Shore's oldest resorts.

"When it was torn down, it was like tearing the heart out of the town," said George Valente, editor and publisher of Jersey Shore Publications who produced "The Bluffs."

"That's why I was passionate enough to do the book," Valente said. "It was bigger than the demise of that place. It was the end of that old hotel scene at the Jersey Shore."

Named for its location on Bay Head's highest dune, the original Bluffs was a Victorian hotel complex established in 1890 by Anna Martin Johnson of Philadelphia, the widow of a railroad businessman. For much of the 20th century, the hotel was run by Alfred E. "Sonny" Johnson Jr., Anna's grandson, who was born in 1905 in a cottage on the compound.

A late-season hurricane in November 1953 wrecked the original 1890 building, and through that winter Johnson moved another structure across East Avenue to reopen a downsized operation by summer.

In the book's appendices, Valente has tucked replicas of original hotel menus and documents that offer a peek back to days when the hotel was packed and required a seasonal staff of near 50.

Robertshaw says the reprinted documents astounded her, down to the scribbled margin notes in old records, and U-shaped stains from paper clips that rusted in salt air washing through the hotel office. There's even a copy of The Bluffs' prized Bloody Mary recipe as perfected by longtime bar manager Al Atheras.

"I thought it was just the Bloody Mary recipe George wanted. He now denies that," Robertshaw joked. "It is amazing. The finished products are just so authentic."

Midway through her first summer as desk clerk, Robertshaw was anxious about her performance — until she learned that the taciturn Johnson had mentioned, "Well, the guests seem to like her."

"That meant he was pleased," she said. It was the start of a long relationship with the family; after Johnson died in 1982, daughter Kathleen Johnson Spies took over daily operations and enlisted Robertshaw as her assistant.

They began new ventures to bring in off-season business, like Friday night happy hours "with an overabundance of hors d'oeurves" and an eggs Benedict Sunday brunch in the Green Room, Robertshaw said.

"We managed to pull that off with a two-burner hot plate, a microwave and a toaster oven," Robertshaw said. "I don't know how much money we made, but it worked."

In the summer months, while families and hotel loyalists congregated on the Bluffs beach, the first-floor bar off East Avenue attracted a young and collegiate crowd in swimsuits. The tavern closed for an hour in early evening so the staff could clean up and get a dinner break before their workout with the big night crowd.

"It's the only place I ever worked where they encouraged the help to drink," recalled Gordon Hesse of Ardencroft, Del., a former lifeguard from Lavallette who worked as a part-time doorman in the early 1980s. "Not a lot, just once in a while, I guess on the theory that it got you to the same level as the light drinkers . . . It was more harmonious."

One summer the standard-issue drink was Black Russians, "made with extremely cold Stolichnaya vodka and iced glasses," Hesse said. "They had this ritual where they would call us to the bar and all service would stop until we'd had our refreshment."

"It was very unique," Hesse said. "There were marine engineers, stockbrokers, mechanics. A real blend of people, so the conversation level was higher. There was a very interesting tone to the place."

Like other locals, Valente knew the bar as a cheerful refuge during desolate winters in the 1980s. He met Robertshaw through a mutual friend, and she contacted him again about four years ago.

Robertshaw had moved on to a successful hotel career in California, but in November 2001 she fell on a marble floor at work and was seriously injured.

"It was during that recovery period that I thought I should be doing something different with my life," she said.

When her family decided to sell their summer home in Maine, Robertshaw traveled there to pick up several boxes that included Bluffs memorabilia. Her brother Bud told her: "You should do something with this."

A friend from The Bluffs, Bunny Pollock of Berkeley, heard about the files and asked Robertshaw to bring them when she visited in 2004.

"She looked up from one of my albums and said, "You have to write a book. You just have to,' " Robertshaw said. "I was the one to do it. I had all the materials, I was close to the family, and I had worked there."

Hesse's own book "All Summer Long," a history of lifeguarding, was printed by Jersey Shore Publications in 2006. When publisher Valente noticed the initials G.H. on the back of some Bluffs photographs from the early 1980s, he called Hesse and learned he had shot many more near the end of the Johnson era.

Likewise, other contributors provided their photos, artifacts and memories of the old hotel. Sold by the Johnson family in 1986, the building survived another decade until it was demolished in 1996, a victim of changing tastes and the merciless logic of escalating real estate values.

"The sadness I felt when that building was knocked down was akin to losing a friend," Hesse said. "Places like that are part of the landscape. The rate of change has accelerated so much. It's too fast."

Kirk Moore: (732) 557-5728

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From The Princeton Packet

July 27, 2007

Jersey places, Jersey faces

By: Carolyn Foote Edelmann, Special Writer

07/27/2007

A review of new books on the Garden State

Four solid books have arrived at my doorstep, all keyed to my major interests: The Pine Barrens, the Jersey Shore, The Bluffs of Bay Head, and that well-kept secret, New Jersey's Coastal Heritage Trail. What remains almost impossible is deciding which book to read first, so I'm reading them all at once. And you will, too — if our three-coasted state holds either memory or promise in your heart and dreams.

Plexus Publishing and Jersey Shore Publishing have produced these handsome volumes....

"Long Beach Island Rhapsody" does not belong in —in fact will not fit in — anyone's glove compartment. Jersey Shore Publications, out of idyllic Bay Head, has gathered paintings of Long Beach Island by 60 contemporary artists.

"Contemporary" is misleading, in that many of these works of art are trips down memory lane. "Used to be" is immortalized in 300 vivid pages. Hues range from primary colors to mists, fogs and weathered shingles. Crisp signs celebrate Chowder Fests, Kayak Rentals and LIVE CRABS. Powerboats vie with sneakboxes, lighthouses with shacks. Carla Coutts-Miners' mermaid on Page 88 is particularly winsome.

This hefty book ought to come with a sign, "Warning, May Cause Abrupt Trips to the Shore." Text notes alert purchasers to paintings for which prints may be ordered. Five pages are studded with artist biographies.

Everyone has his or her own Long Beach Island. If you can't find your own in these pages, take up a paintbrush.

Both Jersey Shore Publications presentations are frankly coffee table books — "The Bluffs: The Story of a Hotel at the Jersey Shore," perhaps, more tea-table than coffee.

Francine LaVance Robertshaw begins her sentimental journey "in the summer of 1979, when I began working at The Bluffs." Her chronicle of Bay Head's luxe establishment — opened in 1890, gone forever in 1996 — recreates a stunning leather-bound family album. Readers are transported to other eras through words, photographs, drawings, paintings, scanned images and actual removable keepsakes.

Paging through this volume is like opening a steamer trunk in Grandmother's attic. Effective reproductions include a tawny 1903 article about The Bluffs, describing Bay Head as "a charming suburb of Point Pleasant." Something thick tucked into Appendix A unfolds into an evocative map of the region, before developers stuck in all those hokey names: "Cartography by Harry Tower, 1936," the map reads. In its upper right-hand corner, Aeolus blows surf onto Bay Head sands. How long has it been since you've seen a classical god on a map?

Official notices warn of "U.S. Army and Coast Guard WW II Regulations: 'ALL SHADES TO BE FULLY DRAWN AT NIGHT WHEN ROOM LIGHTS ARE ON.'" A 1942 letter from manager A. E. Johnson, Jr., assures that "There is, and has been, no oil from wrecked ships on our beach. The military and civil defense regulations, now effective or anticipated, shouldn't cause you much inconvenience."

The Bluffs Bar was proudly termed "A Grand Old Saloon" in early advertisements. This would be the setting for my pivotal meeting with Werner Edelmann, who proposed marriage within a handful of days. Shy and formal, Werner opened our first conversation by mentioning Anna Moffo's stunning debut that week in "La Boheme," which I, too, had attended in Manhattan's Old Met.

Sewn with golden cord, the keepsake pockets open to drawings describing "Parlors and Porches," "Hot and Cold Sea- and Fresh-water Baths." A replica of 1955's rate schedule proffers "Daily Rooms — $7 to $8 with running water; $42 to $48 for the week." Floor plans look yellowed with age, one of which differentiates between "Rates and Bachelors." 1928's Guest List was written by hand in ink browned with the years. Removable menu cards, typed each day, range from 1942 to 1952. Stewed prunes and shirred eggs appear on the first; the last announces availability of avocados and Roquefort cheese.

The book's finale is a series of vintage postcards of the now-vanished Bluffs — some drawn, some hand-colored photographs. Several have writing on the back: "Good weather over Fourth. Wrong tide."

A farewell scene by artist Al Barker, from the 1990s, just before The Bluffs' demise, shows a view "From the corner of the Bachelors' Quarters — the discreet walkway to the beach." The walkway remains to this day on the Shore Road.

Nothing remedies loss. And yet, The Bluffs' illustrious past lives, even expands within these pages, beyond anything I realized in 1960, taking friends from Michigan high school days to this "small piece of heaven on the Jersey Shore."

Jersey Shore Publications: www.jerseyshorevacation.com. Write to jsvacation@aol.com. (888) 227-4673.

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The Desert Sun, 9-18-07
and 92260 Magazine, Sept./Oct. 2007

Book is a shore thing

Pamela Bieri
For The Desert Sun

Francine LaVance Robertshaw's job as front desk clerk, and later as assistant manager, at The Bluffs in Bay Head on the Jersey Shore started her career in the hospitality industry in 1979. The job path, which continued for many years, led Robertshaw to Palm Desert and eventually to a new venture as a writer.

Growing up in Short Hills, N.J., Robertshaw summered on the Jersey Shore as a child. As a young woman, Robertshaw worked eight seasons at The Bluffs, a quaint 38-room Victorian hotel, until she moved to Palm Desert in 1987 when she was hired as a concierge at Marriott's Desert Springs Resort & Spa, then a new 900-room luxury resort.

It was her attention to detail, love of The Bluffs, and its imposing story that has lead to Robertshaw's first book, "The Bluffs." The book centers on the culmination of a life-long love affair with the historic hotel and the people with whom Robertshaw shared many summers at Bay Head starting in 1956.

Published in June, the charming read is designed like a memory album. The book began taking shape long before Robertshaw realized that it was she who would finally tell The Bluffs' story.

Along with photos she took herself, Robertshaw began collecting memorabilia, including the treasured contents of late owner Alfred E. Johnson's desk, shortly after his death in 1982.

Question: What is it like to publish your first book?

Answer: Euphoric. On Feb. 3, 2006, George Valente called to say, "Happy 60th birthday, Francine - I'm going to publish your book!" That day and those words will be with me forever.

Your experiences at The Bluffs have obviously had a major impact on your life. Why do you think that is?

I had a love affair with Bay Head since my family first summered there when I was 10 years old. It lives on to this day. I am inextricably tied to the Jersey Shore going back several generations on my father's side in Monmouth County. There was always the family history, but aside from that, there's something about a favorite "summer place" that grabs you and never lets go.

What event from your years at The Bluffs stands out in your mind the most?

Other than meeting the love of my life? Probably the Rastall-Lee wedding in September 1985. We all knew it was the "swan song" of The Bluffs under the Johnson family ownership. We wanted to hold on to that memory forever. The following December, the "closing party" certainly stands out.

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The Record

November 22, 2007

Rare photos of Sinatra, and other treasure troves

By BILL ERVOLINO
STAFF WRITER

Even if they don't own coffee tables, the friends and loved ones on your holiday gift list will appreciate this year's bumper crop of gorgeous coffee-table books—most of which are filled with eye-popping photos and artwork.

A few, such as ["The Bluffs, Bay Head, NJ,"] "The Marvel Vault" and "Lincoln: The Presidential Archives," offer additional bang for the buck by including acetate pockets filled with memorabilia.

Coffee-table books are larger and pricier than most other hardcover books, which is one reason they are such popular gift items. But the true test of a coffee-table book's appeal is how handsomely it is put together and how quickly one wants to open it and take a gander at everything inside.

Of the many coffee-table books we've rummaged through in recent weeks, these were our favorites:

["THE BLUFFS," by Francine LaVance Robertshaw (JSP, $50) -- Anyone with a connection to The Bluffs, one of the great old Jersey Shore hotels, will likely get a big thrill out of this handsome scrapbook, which, in addition to providing a history of the hotel and its Bay Head locale, includes candid photos and memorabilia such as copies of menus, bar lists, a 1936 map of the area and vintage postcards. Also included are reproductions of paintings by more than a dozen artists with ties to the area and to this great hotel that attracted business folks, families and more than a few colorful eccentrics.]