Jersey Shore Magazine

J e r s e y s h o r e • S P R I N G 2 0 2 1 10 10 Eclectically Crane The Stephen Crane House in Asbury Park BEACHCOMBER " L e t u s t ak e a j o u r n e y do w n t h e S h ore t o s ee w h a t w e c a n f i n d… " N estled along Asbury Park's quaint, Victorian-esque Fourth Avenue stands a pillar of both local and literary history, The Stephen Crane House. A National and State Historic Site, and the headquarters of the Asbury Park Historical Society, the building has a long and rich background including its connection to the great American writer Stephen Crane. Crane's Early Years in Asbury Park On November 1, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, Stephen Crane was the last of fourteen children born to Christian temperance-activist Mary Helen Peck Crane, known as Helen, and Methodist Episcopalian minister Jonathan Townley Crane. Jonathan, who died in 1880, was involved in the founding of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association. In the summer of 1883, the widow Crane purchased the home in neighboring Asbury Park at 508 Fourth Avenue and became its fourth owner in its first five years of existence and first year-round occupant. Known as the Arbutus Cottage during her owner- ship, she resided with eleven-year-old Stephen and his older sister, Agnes. With the Asbury Park beach- es and boardwalk within eyesight, Crane's writing career would begin in the home by penning his first story titled "Uncle Jake and the Bell Handle" at fourteen years old. Crane graduated from the old Asbury Park High School before embarking upon a number of inconsistent stints at boarding schools and universities, but no matter where his feet might have stood, the Jersey Shore never left his bloodstream. In fact, Crane would always refer to himself as a "true Jerseyman." According to Asbury Park Historical Society trustee and live-in curator/ programmer, Tom Chesek, the future author of The Red Badge of Courage would return to his mother's home in Asbury Park every summer. Here he would pick up his first profession- al writing experience as a cub report- er covering the bustling boardwalk scene for the news service overseen by his brother, Jonathan Townley Crane, Jr. In the process of honing his journalistic skills and finding his unique literary voice, the youngest of the Cranes would make the acquain- tance of vacationing authors and influential editors, while cultivating a playfully cynical perspective of Asbury Park's founder (and self-appointed moral guardian) James A. Bradley. It was a gig that lasted until the sum- mer of 1892, when the explosive public reaction to one of Stephen's stories, coupled with the twenty-year- old's scandalous affair with a married woman, made headlines in its own right and served to effectively run him out of the place where mother Helen had presided over the local chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. After Helen Crane's death in 1891, property shares for the Arbutus Cottage were split among the remain- ing Crane children. Stephen would end up selling his share to his Susan Rosenberg The Stephen Crane House at 508 Fourth Avenue in Asbury Park. The Red Badge of Courage (first edition shown) was written by Stephen Crane at the age of twenty-four. It is considered by many to be his most important work and one of the greatest American novels.

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