Lighthouse Pointe

On clear evenings in Brick Haven, when the air is still and the bay is flat, you can see it from the ferry terminal at the end of Harborfront Avenue: the rotating sweep of the lighthouse beacon and, in season, the colored lights of the rides tracing arcs and circles against the darkening sky. Lighthouse Pointe. The park across the water. The city's long-running argument with itself about what the best use of a beautiful peninsula might be, an argument the amusement park won in 1897 and has been winning ever since.

The Peninsula and Its History

Lighthouse Pointe occupies a narrow spit of land that extends southward into the bay from the northern shore, roughly two miles across the water from Brick Haven's main harbor. The lighthouse itself is the oldest structure on the peninsula, built in 1824 to mark the eastern edge of the bay's shipping channel, a handsome white-painted brick structure, sixty-three feet tall, with a Fresnel lens installed in 1871 that remains in operation today.

The idea of a pleasure resort was first proposed in 1874 by a Brick Haven businessman named Cornelius Hargrove, who had visited the seaside amusement parks of the New Jersey shore and returned convinced that what Brick Haven lacked was a destination. The hotel opened in 1879. The carousel opened in 1882. The first roller coaster, a modest wooden structure called the Bay Breeze, opened in 1889 and was immediately, wildly popular.

By 1897, the resort had completed its transformation into a proper amusement park, rechristened Lighthouse Pointe, and the transformation of a real estate speculation into a genuine institution was complete.

The Park Today

Lighthouse Pointe has operated continuously since 1882, surviving two world wars, a hurricane in 1938, the Depression, and a near-catastrophic financial crisis in 1981 from which it was rescued by local civic mobilization and a generous capital injection from a Brick Haven family who preferred not to be credited.

The Lighthouse still operates and is accessible to visitors via a ticket booth at its base, sixty-three feet of spiral staircase rewarding climbers with a view of the bay that has made the effort worthwhile since 1824.

The Grand Carousel, now in its third mechanical generation but housed in the same pavilion as the 1897 original, runs eleven months a year and is the park's most reliable emotional constant.

The Midway is the social spine of the park, the long central avenue lined with game stalls, food stands, and the entrances to the major attractions. The funnel cake is, by general agreement, the best in the region.

The Boardwalk runs the length of the bay-facing shore, offering views of Brick Haven across the water and access to the beach on the calmer side of the peninsula.

The Ferry

The ferry service between Brick Haven and Lighthouse Pointe, inaugurated in 1880, now operated under a public concession, is as much a part of the Lighthouse Pointe experience as any ride in the park. The return crossing, at night, in season, with the park lit behind and Brick Haven lit ahead, is the kind of thing people mention years later.