YESTERYEAR: The panels, created and funded by the Brant Beach Taxpayers Association, are situated between the basketball courts and bocce ball courts in the front of Long Beach Township’s municipal hall at 68th Street in Brant Beach. (Photos by Juliet Kaszas-Hoch)
Long Beach Island’s history is one of historic storms, shipwrecks, fishing and yacht clubs, business owners and vacationers, a tall lighthouse and a long bridge connecting this 18-mile strip to the mainland. While difficult to condense LBI’s centuries, the Brant Beach Taxpayers Association spent months sifting through books and photographs of the Island’s past to create five history panels that were recently installed outside at the Long Beach Township municipal complex.
Three of the panels feature the history of LBI before 1800; the years from 1800 to 1900; and 1900 to 2000. A fourth revisits some of the disasterous nor’easters and hurricanes that have swept through the area. And the fifth is devoted to Brant Beach – the section of the township in which the complex is located.
“The panels were designed by the trustees of the Brant Beach Taxpayers Association, funded by the dues and contributions of the members of the Brant Beach Taxpayers Association, and installed by Long Beach Township,” said Janis Metz, a trustee for the BBTA. “Funding for the panels of almost $5,000 was supplied by dues and donations from the 500 members of the Brant Beach Taxpayers Association.
“This project was first envisioned four years ago,” she explained further. “The president at the time, the late John Fiore, approached Mayor Joseph Mancini about displaying the panels somewhere on the 68th Street municipal complex, and the mayor gave the go-ahead.”
Metz, along with Mike Fahner and Donn O’Brien, also BBTA trustees, formed a committee of three to research and design the panels. A fourth trustee, Rusty Johnson, tackled the tedious process of obtaining permission to use each image, as well as the physical fabrication of the panels.
“Factual sources that were invaluable included the Long Beach Island Historical Association and Museum in Beach Haven, Reilly P. Sharp of the Barnegat Light Museum and the many hardcover books by John Bailey Lloyd and Margaret Thomas Buchholz published by Down the Shore Publishing,” Metz pointed out. “There was so much good information that we could have filled 20 panels.
“The committee pored over hundreds of photographs during many long meetings in the winter of 2024-2025. After the themes and photo selections were finalized, the process of drafting captions, graphic layout and obtaining permissions took almost a year,” she added.
The Revolutionary War, World War II, possible pirates, pound fishermen, gunning clubs, The Lucy Evelyn, Viking Village, The Baldwin Hotel, Wida’s, the nor’easter of March 1962 and Superstorm Sandy, and much more appear on the plaques.
As Metz noted, the panels were manufactured by a company that produces the same for the national parks, and they were installed facing north to reduce sun fading. The Long Beach Township Public Works Department built the pedestals on which the panels sit, and performed the installation in early August.
The panels are located between the bocce courts and basketball courts in the front of town hall. Take a look, and a trip through the past of this much-loved barrier island. —J.K.-H.