Lucy, the Margate Elephant

About this property

Lucy the Elephant is a six-story elephant-shaped wood frame and tin clad building, constructed in 1881 by James V. Lafferty in Margate City, New Jersey. Lucy was built with the purpose of promoting real estate sales and attracting tourists to the area. Today, Lucy remains the oldest surviving roadside tourist attraction in America. On December 5, 1882, the U.S. Patent Office granted James V. Lafferty Patent #268503, giving him the exclusive right to make, use or sell an "animal-shaped building" for a duration of seventeen years. Lafferty funded the design and construction of Lucy at South Atlantic City, now called Margate. He employed Philadelphia architects William Free and J. Mason Kirby for the design of this example of novelty architecture. Lucy was modeled after Jumbo, the famous elephant with Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth, and constructed at a cost of $25,000 - $38,000. Initially named Elephant Bazaar, the structure stands at 65 feet (19.7 m) in height, 60 feet (18.3 m) in length, and 18 feet (5.5 m) in width and weighs about 90 tons. It is currently listed as the 12th tallest statue in the United States. Lucy was constructed with nearly one million pieces of wood, and required 200 kegs of nails, 4 tons of bolts and iron bars; 12,000 square feet of tin covers the exterior. There are 22 windows placed throughout the structure. Lafferty later created another elephant-shaped buildings at Coney Island in Brooklyn and licensed the patent for another in Cape May, New Jersey. Originally, Lafferty brought potential real estate customers to view parcels of land from Lucy's howdah (carriage). The howdah offers unique views of Margate, Atlantic City's skyline, the beach, and the Atlantic Ocean and it serves as an observation deck for modern day visitors during tours. The structure was sold to Anton Gertzen of Philadelphia in 1887 and remained in his family until 1970. Anton's daughter-in-law, Sophia Gertzen, reportedly dubbed the structure "Lucy the Elephant" in 1902. The shape of Lucy's head is characteristic of an Asian elephant, but only males have tusks. Initially, the elephant was referred to as a male, but eventually became commonly known as a female. Through the first half of the 20th century, Lucy served as a restaurant, business office, cottage, and tavern (the last closed by Prohibition). The building was depicted on many souvenir postcards, often referred to as "The Elephant Hotel of Atlantic City." (The actual hotel was in a nearby building, not inside the elephant.) By the 1960s, Lucy had fallen into disrepair and was scheduled for demolition. In 1969, Edwin T. Carpenter and others formed the Margate Civic Association, which later became the Save Lucy Committee under Josephine Harron and Sylvia Carpenter. They were given a 30-day deadline to move the edifice or pay for its demolition. Lucy was spared through various fund-raising events, most notably a door-to-door canvassing campaign by volunteers.

Location

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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