HOWELL — It is difficult to believe that Howell, which is a bustling municipality of more than 50,000 people, was once referred to as “the country.”
But before Wal-Mart opened its doors to customers, before cars could pull up at the Sonic drive-up and before condos were sold to the residents of The Windmill Club, Howell was a summer vacation destination — complete with scenic landscapes, lush forests and seasonal bungalow colonies.
Bungalow colonies reached their apex during the 1940s and 1950s, when hoards of overheated and city-worn New Yorkers would trek to the most rural parts of New Jersey and upstate New York for a summer long getaway. The colonies, most famously located in New York’s Catskill Mountains, generally featured simple bungalows set around a common yard. A swimming pool and a building for entertainment completed the facility.
Howell was once the site of several bungalow colonies, including the Miller and Schure resorts, due to the perfect amalgamation of a countryside atmosphere and a Garden State Parkway exit location.
But one colony, demolished more than 20 years ago, has recently been the source of much buzz on Internet message boards and social networking sites — the Bergerville bungalow colony.
Former summertime guests of Bergerville, which was off Route 9 behind Howell Lanes on Bergerville Road, have been successfully reconnecting through a Bergerville-specific Google group and Facebook group, and are planning reunions in Monmouth County and Florida.
“I’ve been calling this reunion the once-every-half-of-a-century reunion,” said Chuck Hassol, a former Bergerville vacationer. “I haven’t heard from some of these guys in 50 years, and now we’re talking all the time and reminiscing. This is very special.”
Hassol, 69, has been a key person in facilitating the recent reconnection and planning the reunions, which are slated to take place in Manalapan on Oct. 23 and in Florida on Feb. 5-6.
While rummaging through his desk one day, Hassol found photographs from his time at Bergerville (August 1954) and decided to search the Internet for the names of a few of his old friends.
“When I found that Steve Hallerman, a friend of mine from back then, worked at a real estate firm in Manhattan, I sent him an email,” Hassol said. “There was an instant connection. I called him that night and we talked for hours. I asked him, ‘Have you seen or heard from anyone from back then?’ And that’s how it all started.”
After that first blast from the past, Hassol and Hallerman recruited Allen Tinkler, another former Bergerville guest who was Internet savvy, according to Hassol. Tinkler soon started up the Bergerville Google group, which now boasts 70 members and counting.
The group’s primary function is to seek out the colony’s past frequenters, most of whom spent a significant part of their childhood and teenage years at the resort. But members of the group not only attempt to locate their old comrades, but reminisce about Bergerville experiences, share photographs and plan get-togethers.
The Facebook group, created by former Bergerville guest Marc Le Vine, 53, of Freehold Borough, focuses on similar online activities, with the addition of some historical information and current photos of the now-redeveloped site.
“There was so much camaraderie and entertainment and activities,” Le Vine said. “We looked forward to going every year — most of the families were related to each other or were very close. It’s wonderful to talk to those people again.”
But Bergerville guests are not the only ones who are enjoying the recent online reunion.
“I grew up with a generation of Bergerville kids,” said Dr. Seymour Berger, 77, a Facebook group member and the last living family member of the colony’s namesake. “I have a ton of fond memories with the people who summered there. The place was one big family when it was in its prime.”
Berger’s father, Isy Berger, came to Howell from New York via Russia in the early 1910s with intentions to run a small business. But Isy Berger soon realized the business potential of a rural area that was close to the popular vacation spot of Lakewood.
“There initially was only one bungalow, and every year or two, another one was built,” Seymour Berger said. “But he gradually added more and more and more bungalows and it soon became a summer resort.”
By the time Isy Berger’s wife, Augusta “Gussie” Berger, moved down from Brooklyn in 1928, the bungalow colony was thriving, with 14 families as regular summer tenants.
According to Berger, a former doctor of internal medicine and cardiology, Bergerville would house about 100 families in approximately 60 bungalows each summer during its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s. He estimated that 75 to 80 percent of the guests would return every year.
“The place was so popular that you would have to take a smaller bungalow just to get on the list,” Hassol said.
Bungalow facilities were sparse, according to Hassol — the cottages were only equipped with beds, second-hand furniture, a gas burner for hot water and an ice box (ice was delivered every morning by bungalow colony employee Sam Nagy). There were no telephones, except in the Casino building. A few of the bungalows had a bathtub; however, most guests had to use a community bathroom.
“We were really roughing it,” Le Vine said, “but with all there was to do at Bergerville, it didn’t matter.”
On the premises, there was a swimming pool hand-built by Berger and a few workers, which was said to have been perhaps the largest swimming pool in Monmouth County at the time. Also featured were handball and tennis courts, a baseball diamond, a day camp for children, a nightclub/recreation hall named the IB Club, a luncheonette, an outdoor movie theater and a convenience store called the Pineview Grocery (at the corner of what is now Route 9 and Bergerville Road), where Seymour Berger worked as a teenager.
The Casino was the main attraction — it hosted various entertainment acts every Saturday night, as well as dances.
During the off-season the Bergers tended to their farm, which cultivated everything from chickens to corn to cows. They also spent much of the winter preparing for the next vacation season and making necessary repairs to the facilities
But around 1967, the bungalow colony started to fade.
“As the jet age came about and took vacationers elsewhere, Lakewood and the local resort areas died out,” Berger said. “And so did Bergerville.”
Bergerville’s demise was in part due to the death of Seymour Berger’s brother, Arthur Berger, who served as the chief operations person for the bungalow colony. Arthur Berger, who maintained the swimming pool and handled all repairs along with a small crew of workmen, was killed on Jan. 21, 1969 in an automobile accident at Bergerville Road and Route 9.
In addition to running the resort, Berger, 39, was the principal of the Keyport Central School and was working on his doctorate degree at the time of his death.
Between Arthur Berger’s death in 1969 and Isy Berger’s death 15 years earlier, Mrs. Berger could no longer maintain the resort. Freehold Raceway used the facility for some time after to house harness drivers, but the 137-acre property was soon sold to developers and demolished. Point O’ Woods, a single-family home and condominium development, was built on the tract in the mid-1980s.
Little remains from the bungalow colony now, but memories still loom large in the minds of former vacationers.
“The biggest thing was that we were all a bunch of New York City people from Brooklyn and Queens,” Hassol said. “We only knew public school and cement playgrounds during the year, but in the summer we got to go out to the country. It was a different world.”
Hassol explained that Bergerville was a “word of mouth” destination — most of the families that vacationed there knew each other and were not particularly wealthy.
“Most families would save the whole year to go,” Le Vine said, noting that the entire summer cost about $500 during the years he went.
Hassol, who stayed with his family at Bergerville between the ages of 3 and 12, continued to spend his summers there even after his family moved to Freehold.
“I used to hitchhike to Bergerville from Route 9 or just walk down the road — that’s how much I loved it,” he said. “I made it a point to get there every summer until I was 20 years old.”
However, Hassol’s experiences at the resort did not always go as planned.
“I didn’t know enough to stay away from the poison ivy or the poison oak or the poison sumac. I always managed to get one of them — or sometimes all three,” he said. “All my mom could do with me was douse me in chamomile lotion.”
But aside from such itchy situations, Hassol remembers a group he formed called “Dead Man’s Hide-Away.” The group would gather around a fire-pit and tell ghost stories.
“Then at some point, the teenage girls would come and we used to have a good time, you know, playing spin the bottle,” Hassol said. “A few of us learned to kiss at Bergerville.”
Nina Gillery, also a former guest of Bergerville, posted several memories of the resort on the Google group. One memory that stands out in her mind is when Isy Berger would charge the Bergerville kids 10 cents to ride on the back of his truck to Asbury Park, where they would see acts like Tony Bennett and the Ames Brothers at Convention Hall.
Former vacationer Alan Loomer also remembers traveling to Asbury Park, except he would ride in Hassol’s 1950 Chevy to see professional wrestling matches in the seaside resort.
Lewis Berger (no relation to the Bergers) posted his memories on the Google message board as well, noting such mischievous activities like crawling under the fence to get into Freehold Raceway and drag racing on Jackson Mills Road.
Le Vine, who was one of the last generations of Bergerville kids, spent the first 10 summers of his life at the resort. While he said he remembers little in comparison to others about Bergerville, he described his experience as one of the most memorable times in his childhood.
“I’d go to the pond to fish and catch frogs. It was a very innocent time that everyone seemed to enjoy,” he said. “There isn’t anything like Bergerville anymore.”