History of Spring Garden Inn

Spring Garden Inn is an historical landmark

Here is the historical marker in front of our house:

Here is the modern NJ Transit (Philly to AC) that runs behind our house:

The house is registered in NJ Historical register and in the Library of Congress, as the house was catalogued during the Depression in a WPA project called HABS (Historic American Buildings Survey).

See more on HABS

The current Philadelphia-Atlantic City line was once the Camden Atlantic City line which ran trains to the newly created resort beginning in the 1850s. Spring Garden Inn was a stop, both for passengers to take a bathrooom break and have a drink or two at the bar, and at some point, our house served as a post office, and mail was delivered from the train.

See train history

See discussion of house in the book, More Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey, by Henry Charlton Beck

Some cool pictures and architectural line drawings and historical information can be found at Library of Congress (type in "NJ0385" in first query window).Here are some pictures of the house in the 30's before it was restored by the Beebe family in the 40's:

Here is the old door knocker which is still on the door:

Here is the house in the 1960s when the Beebes lived there, what a beautiful job of restoration they did, including adding gardens. Note the shutters which were gone when we bought the house:

"Spring Garden is on older maps but it lost significance altogether when the new White Horse Pike passed it by, over the Ancora bridge further up the road. Here you will find the old Spring Garden Hotel, built in 1826 by David, son of Josiah Albertson. The hotel, an 18-room dwelling when he was there, is still a part of the Albertson Estate. Mrs. Claude P. Chew who now lives there with her husband, was an Albertson, a direct descendant.

The property, as part of the Blue Anchor Tract, saw lively days when hotels were necessary to the operation of stage roads. It was Josiah Albertson who operated the Blue Anchor Hotel. At Spring Garden, stagecoaches from Cape May made a stop-over, changing horses and stabling them across the road where today there is nothing to show where the huge barns once stood.

Later, when the first wood-burning trains started down to the first Atlantic City, a resort reared from a swampy island, passengers stretched their legs on the platform behind the hotel and had a drink or two at the bar while the cars waited for them. This was a long journey in those days and time out was necessary without the modern conveniences we know and so little appreciate. Today only a few cinders remain to show where the platform and the adjoining beer garden were.

The road on which the hotel still stands was the old White Horse Pike. The new road cuts directly across the field that lay behind the barns and stables across the way. Down the road was a mill pond that became, in later years, a cranberry bog--now it's just a swamp. There was a tenant house or two, as well, but these, with the mill are gone.

This old hostel, sturdily built of wood, laid over brick, is a monument to the line of Albertsons who this particular section of Southern New Jersey grow up. There was Josiah, of Blue Anchor; his son, David, who built the hotel at Spring Garden; his son, Josiah, who lived on there; and now Mrs. Chew, his daughter.

"The stagecoaches stopped coming when the trains pushed through," Mr. Chew told us. "Now, there aren't many trains. Did you come up by the way of the 'Whoopee Road'?"

We told him we had blundered through and he said that was the road we had followed. "Why do they call it the Whoopee Road?" we asked him.

"Why," he said, 'everybody down that way makes moonshine. They've had a few raids. Government snoopers have been ducking in and out. But they still carry on. There's plenty of whoopee, from what they tell me.'"

My comments on the above:

Since Beck wrote and published this book in 1937, there have been further changes. The house still stands, the field between new and old White Horse Pike is a peach orchard owned by Mr. Tony Grasso, of Elm, NJ, just down the new Pike. We can find no evidence of the train platform or beer garden. And the woods where whoopee was once made are part of Wharton State Forest. The only whoopee is that imbibed by the younger folk fooling around in the woods and sometimes casting their beer and wine bottles in the woods (yes they are evil!). The train does still run between Philly and Atlantic City right behind our house, but sadly it does not stop here. We have to drive to Hammonton or Atco to catch it!

Train in winter:

Old mileage marker, not sure if it was on the old Pike or train tracks:

We are fairly certain that it means 24 miles to Camden, which is about right for this area.