{"id":3258,"date":"2016-11-28T02:38:37","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T07:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/?p=3258"},"modified":"2016-11-28T02:38:37","modified_gmt":"2016-11-28T07:38:37","slug":"a-family-that-helped-shape-ortley-beach-comes-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/2016\/11\/a-family-that-helped-shape-ortley-beach-comes-home\/","title":{"rendered":"A Family That Helped Shape Ortley Beach Comes Home"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Edith<\/a>

Edith Lord Segree and Barbara Lord Biedenbach, whose family the Lord House in Ortley Beach is named for. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

For most beachgoers, the Lord House is a beacon of a day on the sand \u2013 a tall building on the Ortley Beach boardwalk that serves as a lifeguard headquarters, provides a space to use the restroom and change clothes before a ride home.\u00a0But for two sisters who\u00a0returned to the neighborhood over the holiday weekend, the building has a different meaning: it\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

Edith Lord Segree, 75, and\u00a0Barbara Lord Biedenbach, 70, looked up at the building that was once their grandmother\u2019s home for the first time since it underwent extensive renovations following damage sustained during Superstorm Sandy. Segree now lives in Maryland and\u00a0Biedenbach lives in Mount Holly, but Ortley Beach helped shape their lives and their family helped shape Ortley Beach and develop its early tourism economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sisters\u2019 grandfather and grandmother were married in 1904 and soon had their father, Arthur Lord. Around the same time, the elder Lord and a partner opened the Ortley Inn where the present Lord House lifeguard station now stands.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople would come visiting from Philadelphia or from the\u00a0north by train, then they were brought over to the hotel by horse and buggy,\u201d said\u00a0Biedenbach. \u201cWe can date it back to at least 1917, when the hotel was running, but we don\u2019t know exactly when it opened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Ortley Inn, in an undated photo. (Photo: Lord Family)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Lord family still has a menu from the old inn. A broiled shad dinner went for 35 cents. Fried oysters were served six at a time for 25 cents, and a slice of cake for desert set guests back 5 cents. According to an old advertisement in the New York Times, a weeklong stay\u00a0at the inn cost between $8 and $14 depending on the size and location of the room. All rooms featured both hot and cold water.<\/p>\n

A \u201cwell known physician\u201d had an office nearby, the advertisement said. The main attraction, of course, was a 100-foot distance to the ocean, \u201caffording fine surf bathing, fishing and sailing, with an extensive beach of pure white sand, besides over seventy acres of beach land, a paradise for youth and children.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Ortley Inn\u2019s menu, in an undated photo. (Photo: Lord Family)<\/p><\/div>\n

The hotel, however, would not last long. The very train that brought guests to the oceanfront inn created a spark on its tracks one day in 1922, igniting a blaze that spread quickly up the island, driven by gusty winds. The Ortley Inn burnt down and was never rebuilt. It was after the fire that the Lord family would buy out their partner in the business and use the property to construct a single-family home for themselves.<\/p>\n

The history of the Lord House is one that mirrors New Jersey\u2019s coastal history up and down the Shore. At one time, there were numerous large homes neighboring the Lord family, Segree said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were several big houses along the ocean, and some of the families had kids our age,\u201d said\u00a0Biedenbach \u201cThere weren\u2019t many houses here, but we had a great time playing. We got to be good friends with everyone. We had a tennis court, shuffleboard, everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lord sisters and their cousins visited their grandmother\u2019s house every weekend during the summer, and both her family and the family of her aunt and uncle shared two-week vacations by themselves each year. But like the inn that was there before, the family\u2019s property suffered another blow in 1962, when the Ash Wednesday Storm blew through, changing the island\u2019s landscape forever.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The property now known as the Lord House in Ortley Beach. (Photo: Lord Family)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

The property now known as the Lord House in Ortley Beach. (Photo: Lord Family)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cMy grandmother stayed until 1962,\u201d Segree said. \u201cIt had wiped out the other houses, but left ours intact, except it took the top porch off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the home had weathered the storm, there were new priorities following the natural disaster. The municipal government \u2013 then known as Dover Township \u2013 decided to condemn the property and take it through eminent domain, solidifying the public ownership that lasts to this day. The Lord family moved to another home across the street, near the corner of Fourth Avenue and between Route 35 north and the Oceanfront block.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral years later, they built the parking lot and turned the house into a lifeguard headquarters,\u201d Segree recalled. \u201cIt was on steel and concrete pilings, and was still structurally sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

The family remained in Ortley Beach until 1986, when the last of their properties was sold. The Lord sisters said this weekend they remembered beaches much larger than those today, but the same stunning view of the ocean, where anglers would come to fish and whales would breach and provide a show for onlookers.<\/p>\n

Until recently, Segree said, she did not even know the building was named for her family \u2013 or at least one member of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought, \u2018oh my golly, they dug out some records and found us,'\u201d said Segree. \u201cBut now, we hear other people saying it was named for a lifeguard named Tom. My brother is named Tom, and he was a lifeguard for many years, so we\u2019re not sure which it\u2019s named for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Edith<\/a>

Edith Lord Segree and Barbara Lord Biedenbach, whose family the Lord House in Ortley Beach is named for. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Local historians from Ortley Beach are currently in the midst of authoring a history of the neighborhood, which prompted the visit by the Lord sisters. The encounter brought back years\u2019 worth of happy memories.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe memories that I have hear, from my parents and grandparents, are priceless,\u201d Segree said.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For most beachgoers, the Lord House is a beacon of a day on the sand \u2013 a tall building on the Ortley Beach boardwalk that serves as a lifeguard headquarters, provides a space to use the restroom and change clothes before a ride home.\u00a0But for two sisters who\u00a0returned to the neighborhood over the holiday weekend, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18,92],"tags":[936,935,48,19,934,933],"class_list":["post-3258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-ortley-beach","tag-lifeguard-building","tag-lord-house","tag-ortley-beach","tag-ortley-beach-nj-news","tag-ortley-hotel","tag-ortley-inn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/lord_headline_img.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgsn9q-Qy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}