You know this face. It's Tillie, the Jersey Shore icon.
Tillie's quirky grin is an an unmistakable symbol of Asbury
Park. Take a stroll on the boardwalk, and you'll find the
face of the city's unofficial mascot everywhere. Search Asbury
Park on Instagram. And there he is. He's even got his own beer.
But this peculiar character is recognized far beyond the shore.
Tillie's made his mark on pop culture with cameos in
everything from magazines to hit TV shows, including the sopranos.
The way the American flag is to the US. This is
Asbury Park to some people, many people. It's this recreation of
Tillie peering out from the Wonder Bar that greets locals and
visitors to the world famous waterfront. But the funny face
that started it all is locked away behind a sewage treatment
plant in the same box it's been confined to for 17 years. The
wooden shed has been battered by extreme weather at the shore,
which has visibly taken its toll inside layers of paint have been
flaking away. The real Tillie is now at a tipping point. And
Asbury Park may be dangerously close to losing this unique
piece of its history. At some point, and I think it's getting
near that, it's not going to be salvaged, because it's not going
to be the image that people expect it to be. This year marks
the 65th anniversary of Asbury Park's original Tillie mural,
which sits in a parking lot just steps away from the ocean. The
last time the public saw the painting was in 2004 as it was
being cut from the palace amusements building, a landmark
immortalized by Bruce Springsteen
It's one of the few things that has kind of stayed constant in
Asbury since you know, back in the 50s and 60s. It just reminds
me of a good time and old times. The mural kept in the shed is
one of two Tillies that adorn the facade of palace amusements
painted by Leslie worth Thomas Tillies. This simultaneously amusing
and haunting face greeted decades of visitors to the
indoor amusement park. The murals gained worldwide
notoriety though in the 1970s and 80s, as references to the
palace emerged from some of Springsteen's biggest hits,
including Born to Run, Tillie even appeared on an official
Springsteen tour t shirt, and served as an eye catching
backdrop in an early publicity photo. This was probably the
first photo that most people saw of Bruce in the street band, and
it was taken at the palace at night, Tillie
gloriously lit up. As developers pursued the revitalization of
the city in the 90s and 2000s, however, the palace was eyed for
demolition to make way for new construction. That's when a
group of Springsteen fans came together to form the nonprofit
Save Tillie, Bob Crane. The President says the group's
original mission was to save palace amusements, which stood
in this general area not too far from the old carousel house.
Finally, when push came to shove, it became clear that
there was no way to save palace amusements. The state set forth
a series of rules under which palace would be demolished. And
they gave the developers a chance to put together a list of
all the items that they would preserve and save. They put
Tillie on the list. It was basically a compromise. Even the
boss took notice of the campaign to rescue Tillie, and other
treasures from the palace. In fact, Springsteen donated to the
nonprofit several times with proceeds from local benefit
concerts. On June 11, 2004. Members of Save Tillie and people
from throughout the community watched anxiously as workers cut
one of the Tillie murals are roughly 16 by 22 foot section of
cinderblock from the building. That crane operator
lifted Tillie a so lovingly so slowly, almost with the skill of
a surgeon.
I mean, there was dead silence on the street. Total silence and
then everybody erupted into cheers.
It was it was astonishing still is to even think about it. It's
something you never forget.
The giant mural was loaded onto a trailer and backed into the
parking lot of the Asbury Park wastewater treatment plant.
Crane says, believe it or not, the parking lot was a better
storage option than what
developers had initially proposed for Tillie
Asbury Partners, the original developers wanted to put the
murals on the beach, wrapped in plastic. In all, more than two
dozen artifacts, including this bumper car mural, were hauled
out of the palace before it was demolished. They were all meant
to be stored temporarily but 17 years later, Tillie is still
waiting to return to public view. It is just a frustrating,
very emotional distressing situation. According to the
permit outlining Asbury Park's oceanfront redevelopment
project, boardwalk developer Madison Marquette is responsible
for storing Tillie and the other items. So the permit that
Madison Marquette has to abide by says the Tillie mural has to
be used in a new retail space or in the wall of a hotel lobby at
the site of the former palace building. Madison Marquette did
allow us to see Tillie in th storage shed, but wouldn't
comment directly on when th mural would be put on display
Is it just Madison Marquette that makes the final decision
about where Tillie goes and when? There's a lot of players when
it comes to where Tillie is goin to wind up.
There's Madison Marquette, which is responsible for the storage of Tillie
there's beachfront developer Istar which owns a lot
of buildings near the water. And then there's the city as well
as the Department of Environmetal Protection, which approved
the entire beachfront develop ent permit. So they can't just
roll this thing out so the public can see it. Not long after Tillie
was cut from the palace and stashed away in the wooden crate
in 2004, A replica of Tllie's mischievous smile appeared
on top of the Wonder Bar. When we first did it, people
were clapping they were walking by and like yes!
They were so excited to see the Tillie back up. local artists Leslie
Steigelman and Julian Valencia had to scramble to complete the clone for an advertising photo shoot involving Chevy
Corvette, and the Goo Goo Dolls. A production company had planned to
use the front of the palace as the backdrop except by the time
they arrived in Asbury Park, the building and Tillie were gone.
The owners of the Wonder Bar quickly offered
up their building to make sure the ad campaign stayed in Asbury Park.
They were really in a bind. And of course, we totally
agreed to let them paint the Tillie on our monolith. And then not
only did they just paint the Tillie, but they painted the whole
building the aqua-green color to match the original palace,
and it was just so exciting. The Wonder Bar mural marked a
revival for Tillie. As the waterfront flourished, a new
generation would come to know his smiling face from his new
home. I love to see it there I think it looks great. I'm glad to keep
memory alive. People come from all over the world to see Tillie
have their pictures taken in front of it. Nevertheless,
members of Save Tillie spent years fighting to get the
original mural out of the shed or at least moved to a storage
facility better suited for preservation. Crane says the
nonprofit even paid for an art conservator to inspect the
palace murals and report on their condition three times
between 2005 and 2016. The final report by Paul Himmelstein
detailed significant decay. sitting on all of the dirt and
debris that had accumulated at the base of the painting were
new chips of paint. The loss of the surface is really
the critical issue here because obviously, if you lose
the surface having a bunch of cement blocks with nothing on them is
not going to make a whole lot of sense to anyone. But Tillie is
not lost. He could still be restored. Himmelstein says
artists have the ability to reattach these chunks of paint,
lifting off the surface of the mural, then gaps of color could
be filled in to get Tillie looking like he did in the glory
days. I think having the original Tillie on display
somewhere would be a draw people would come to town to see it.
Just that weird circus amusement culture from the past that you
know, they try to replicate in style now but there's nothing
that's ever going to be like that again. Now we want to hear
from you. What do you want to see happen next with Asbury
Park's original Tillie. For NJ.com. I'm Natalie Paterson.