Asbury Park’s Tillie is still safe

ASBURY PARK – Tillie has been saved, at least for now.

“The good news is that the Tillie mural and the bumper car murals are in fairly stable condition,” said Bob Crane, president of Save Tillie, the organization that fought to save the smiling Tillie face that was located on the side of the Palace Amusements building at Cookman Avenue and Kingsley Street. “There is some evidence of paint loss, and the rate of deterioration needs to be checked annually.”

The Tillie face, along with the bumper car mural, were removed from the exterior of the Palace building before it was torn down in June 2004. Since then, they have been stored in sheds outside the city’s wastewater treatment plant on Kingsley Street at Eighth Avenue.

Tillie has become an international symbol of Asbury Park, and its smiling likeness can be found on everything from T-shirts to coffee mugs to earrings.

It is associated with Bruce Springsteen in part because a famous photo of the singer and the E Street Band was taken beneath a glowing Tillie in 1972. Palace Amusements also features prominently in The Boss’ iconic “Born to Run,” in which the lyrics reference the building.

The murals and other artifacts from the Palace, which are stored in various locations along the city’s beachfront, were inspected on June 19 by Paul Himmelstein, a nationally respected conservator, who submitted a report to Save Tillie last month. They are being maintained and preserved by waterfront redeveloper Madison Marquette.

The items had not been viewed for 10 years before Himmelstein made his inspection.

The image is named Tillie after George C. Tilyou, who created the first such face for Steeplechase Park in Coney Island in the late 19th century. Asbury’s Tillie, seemingly copied from the smiling face at Steeplechase Park, glowed with neon and had one winking eye.

A new version of Tillie’s smiling face now adorns the Wonder Bar at Ocean and Fifth avenues.

Thirty-three artifacts from the Palace, including the two murals, were saved when the building was torn down. The pieces are expected to be reused in a new waterfront building, as part of an agreement made when the state approved the building’s demolition by Asbury Partners in 2004. Save Tillie had worked to have the building added to the National Register of Historic Places, as well as the New Jersey register, in 2000.

Two of the saved pieces from the Palace have been lost in the intervening years, but the others, including 26 metal channel letters, have been preserved.

Himmelstein’s inspection was the first since superstorm Sandy struck the Jersey Shore, destroying a portion of the Asbury Park boardwalk. He found that Sandy’s floodwaters had reached the murals stored in the shed near the wastewater treatment building, but seemed to have caused little damage to the paintings, made of stucco and cinder blocks.

Sandy did more damage to wooden cutouts illustrating amusement scenes that were taken from the Cookman Avenue side of the Palace. Stored in ground level at the Casino building on the boardwalk’s south end, those artifacts were soaked with water, “and the wood at the bottom shows considerable deterioration,” Himmelstein said. He recommended that the cutouts be moved to a higher — and drier — location.

Madison Marquette plans to move the items to a raised area within the Casino building, according to a letter that Save Tillie received from the developer.