A Tale of Two Elephants

It all began with P.T. Barnum.

The 19^th century showman and huckster, best remembered for saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” may have unwittingly inspired two of the Jersey Shore’s strangest but most memorable attractions: Elephant Bazaar, a pachyderm-shaped structure constructed in South Atlantic City; and the Light of Asia, a copycat version later built in South Cape May. 

In 1881, Phineas Taylor Barnum’s traveling circus, dubbed “The Greatest Show on Earth,” added a giant African bush elephant named Jumbo. With trademark hyperbole, Barnum called the beast a “Towering Monarch of His Mighty Race, Whose Like the World Will Never See Again.” For once, Barnum wasn’t exaggerating: Jumbo was almost 12 feet tall and weighed more than six tons.

That April, the elephant made his U.S. debut at Madison Square Garden. He then embarked on a triumphant national tour, shipped in a massive, specially designed railroad car called “Jumbo’s Palace.” 

Thanks to the pachyderm, Barnum’s circus raked in almost $2 million that year, a phenomenal amount for the time. And the name “Jumbo” became part of the national lexicon.

A ‘Bazaar’ Concept

The Jumbo craze wasn’t lost on Philadelphia real estate speculator James V. Lafferty Jr., who had invested heavily in Jersey shore real estate, but couldn’t lure enough buyers to the isolated, sandy plots. He needed a gimmick, something eye-catching that would draw customers and tourists alike.

Capitalizing on Jumbo’s notoriety, he commissioned architect William Free to design a six-story, 90-ton, elephant-shaped structure to serve as his seaside headquarters. Christened “Elephant Bazaar,” it was built on the beach in Atlantic City’s remote southern end, which later became the city of Margate.  

“Lafferty wanted something big and grandiose that curiosity seekers would be compelled to see,” says Rich Helfant, executive director of the attraction now known as Lucy the Elephant. “He had been advertising in Philadelphia newspapers about the Jersey shore, the salt air, how healthy it all was … He thought if he built this oddity, people would come down, take the trolley from Atlantic City, and tour the elephant for a dime.” 

He also hoped some would choose to buy property at the shore. Lafferty was so sure of the attraction’s appeal that he patented the design, thus keeping elephant-shaped buildings from cropping up on every corner. 

Trunk Show

Built of one million pieces of wood and covered with sheets of tin, Elephant Bazaar measured 60 feet from tail to tusk, had a rectangular window in its rear (later known as the “pane in its butt”), and massive, curved white tusks. Its windowed eyes gazed glassily out at the sand and surf.

Inside, a spiral staircase led from its hind legs to the second floor, and another narrow passage took visitors to the rooftop howdah, or traditional Indian riding carriage. The howdah was similar to one worn by Jumbo at his former home, the London Zoo, where he gave rides to the rich and royal, including a young Winston Churchill and the children of Queen Victoria. 

From a desk in the “head” of Elephant Bazaar, Lafferty would deliver his sales pitch, and then escort potential customers to the open-air howdah, where he pointed out the splendors of the shore. 

But he found few buyers. And though tourists flocked to see the strange elephant-shaped building, they often did not take the tour. One prominent guest did walk through: future President Woodrow Wilson, who gave his tour guide an astoundingly generous tip of $1.

Just two years after Elephant Bazaar opened, Lafferty sold it to Anthony Gertzen of Philadelphia; Gertzen’s wife, Sophia, reportedly changed the name to Lucy, though the tusks clearly identified it as a bull elephant. 

Light Fantastic

Though the roadside elephant didn’t succeed in Atlantic City, it didn’t deter developer Theodore M. Reger from building a replica in Cape May.  Like Lafferty, Reger believed new rail service to the area would bring tourists in droves and spark residential development. 

Lafferty sold the rights with one provision:  Reger’s elephant must be smaller than Elephant Bazaar. The second building came in at five stories, and was also less ornate than its Atlantic City counterpart. Reger gave it the regal name “Light of Asia,” but locals soon took to calling it “Old Jumbo.”

Through newspaper advertisements, Reger invited merchants “to sell soda water, fancy articles, etc.” in the new building, and avail themselves of the “bathhouses, ice cream garden and dairy.” The concessions were not great moneymakers; it takes plenty of 10-cent tours to recoup $18,000 in construction costs. But Reger’s venture was successful in another way, according to architect Joe E. Jordan, a former Drexel University professor and author of Cape May Point: The Illustrated History: 1875 to the Present. 

The economy was booming, and Reger “sold a number of lots and houses,” Jordan says.  A hotel was built in the vicinity, and for a time construction continued at a brisk pace. But the bonanza was short-lived ― for Reger and the nation. 

“In 1891, we had one of the worst recessions in the country, rivaling our Great Depression,”Jordan continues. During the Panic of 1893, the stock market crashed, followed by bank runs, bank closures, and a government bailout. Businesses failed, and many property owners, particularly farmers, lost their land. 

“That set back development at the seashore for a number of years,” says Jordan. “But what really put an end to Jumbo was the approaching sea.”

White Elephant

“During that period, from the late 1870s to 1900, there was enormous erosion” along the coast in South Cape May, including the road that connected Cape May and Cape May Point, Jordan says. “Tracks were washed out. And it was the rail line that brought visitors to Jumbo.” 

A series of storms, mostly nor’easters, battered the coast. Old Jumbo soon fell into disrepair. 

“It was vandalized in the latter part of its life,” says Jordan. According to some reports, Jumbo was eventually taken over by squatters.  By the spring of 1900, the derelict structure was declared unfit for any purpose. According to newspaper accounts of the time, it was torn down, and what remained was dispatched in a bonfire. 

Alas, the real-life Jumbo had already met an ignominious fate. Several years earlier, in 1885, the circus star had appeared in Ontario, Canada. On his way back to his railroad car, he was struck and killed by a locomotive. 

In P.T. Barnum’s version of the tragedy, Jumbo died to keep a younger elephant, Tom Thumb, from being hit. But no witnesses supported that fanciful account. 

South Cape May itself was no luckier. Over the years, the southernmost tip of the peninsula was continually pounded by storms, and the Great American Hurricane of 1944 carried much of it back to the sea. By 1950, most residents of the area had fled, and the community was legally dissolved. According to a 2010 article in The New York Times. “Three decades ago, the Nature Conservancy took over and created a refuge for migratory birds. The group restored dunes to keep back the sea, allowing a freshwater wetland to form…Now there are head-high grasses, and nesting grounds for least terns, piping plovers, American oystercatchers and swans.” 

Last Elephant Standing

Only Lucy avoided the elephant’s graveyard, and she was lucky to survive changes in ownership, reversals of fortune, lightning strikes, a 1904 fire, and a century-plus of tempestuous shore weather, including the most recent assault of Hurricane Sandy.

From her early days as a real estate office, Lucy had been a summer home, a tavern, a tourist camp, a rooming house, and a tavern again. In 1970, she faced the wrecking ball. But a group of local Lucy lovers rallied to save her, and in 1976, America’s Bicentennial, the roadside curiosity was named to the U.S. Department of Interior’s National Park Registry of Historical Landmarks.

Now restored to her original splendor, Lucy the Elephant welcomes some 130,000 visitors per year. They come to admire her purple-painted toenails, climb her spiral staircase to the howdah, and see what James V. Lafferty and Theodore M. Reger saw more than 130 years ago: one of the fairest coastlines in the land.