Brielle and the Brielle Land Association
Did you ever wonder how Brielle got its name?
Brielle was originally called “Landing” or “Union Landing”. In July 1881 a group of fourteen businessmen from Jersey City formed the Brielle Land Association and put up $15,000 in capital to purchase 150 acres of land just to the southeast side of Manasquan Village in Union Landing. They purchased this land with the intention of subdividing it into residential lots and building vacation homes. They later bought land a bit farther south in the Green Avenue and Crescent Drive areas of Brielle. The land association was named Brielle because the area reminded one of the developers of another bucolic town on a river that he had visited – Brielle, Holland. It was a name they thought would sell lots at the shore.
Brielle was to be a new summer resort situated in what was then Wall, Monmouth County. The town was advertised as being accessible to New York and Philadelphia, having the then unexcelled facilities of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Central Railroads, both using the same tracks in this area. The Brielle Land Association made sure that the Railroads built a new station with lawn, facilities, and flowers in the heart of their new development. Bathing, boating, sailing, fishing, and gunning were afforded by the Manasquan River and Inlet to the ocean and were claimed to be unequalled by any resort of the entire New Jersey Coast.
The Brielle Land Association widened and graded roads, and bordered them with shade trees. The first three streets were Magnolia, Park (later renamed Fisk), and Woodland Avenues. They sold lots on these streets for $150 to $250, depending on the lot size, with many having “water” frontage on the Glimmer Glass. Cottages of the Queen Anne style were built on the lots, some of which are still in existence.
The Brielle Land Association soon built a spacious family hotel on the corner of Park Avenue and Brielle Avenue. The hotel was opened in 1883, and was named the “Hotel Carteret”. Families living in the area could then avail themselves of meals in the new hotel, thereby avoiding the inconveniences of meal preparation during their summer vacation. Water works were promised but never materialized.
The Brielle Land Association also built Brielle Road and requested that the county build them a bridge to afford residents access to ocean bathing. The Manasquan Seaside newspaper reported on Friday May 11, 1883 that, “The Board of Freeholders met at Brielle on Wednesday of this week after viewing the route for the proposed new road from that place to the sea and considering the matter fully, decided not only that the county would build the bridge but also granted $1500 for building the abutment.”
By July of 1883 the bridge had been completed. The July 13, 1883 Manasquan Seaside reported, “The committee of the Board of chosen Freeholders having in charge the building of the bridge over the Glimmerglass, met at Brielle on Monday last to inspect the bridge just completed. The Freeholders, with a number of invited guests from this vicinity, were handsomely entertained at a dinner by the Brielle (Land) Association at the Hotel Carteret, after which the new structure was examined by the committee and a number of other gentlemen present and all expressed themselves highly satisfied with the work done by the contractor, Mr. Nesbit.” In the article it was also reported that, “The Brielle (Land) Association have built a very handsome pavilion and bathing establishment upon the beach, directly opposite their property, for the use of the guests of the Hotel Carteret”.
The Brielle Land Association was dissolved in about 1897, with the stockholders given lots up to the amount of their stock holdings. More than 20 years later in 1919 the Borough of Brielle was created, consisting of the Brielle Land Association tract, the original Union Landing area, the and all the property up along the river as far as Old Bridge Road.
- Union Landing Historical Society of Brielle