Manasquan Borough Hall is located at 201 East Main Street, Manasquan NJ 08736.
Phone: 732‑223‑0544. Formerly known as Squan Village, the Borough of Manasquan was incorporate in 1887.
Neighborhoods
Historic Manasquan [‡]
While the majority of towns along the Northern Jersey Shore grew through the efforts of land associations, Manasquan was already an established year-round community when the railroad arrived. Located at the mouth of the Manasquan River, the settlement profited from both harbor and water power, supplying New Yorkers with soft-shell crabs and oysters. The village grew around an inn built in 1808 and a tavern constructed a few years later. The second owner of the tavern, Timothy Bloomfield, named the area "Squan Village" in 1825. In the 1850s stagecoaches traveled from Manasquan to Red Bank, another industrial center. Four stage lines ran from Jay Street in New York City, to Squan village and Point Pleasant along "an old sand road." [1] Two decades later, the town proudly advertised warehouses, lumberyards, foundries and, in 1885, its first factory. The suggestion of an industrial past lives on in the W. F. Sherman Millwork Building, and several brick commercial structures downtown.
Nevertheless, no seaside community was exempt from the tourist trade in the late 19th century. Around 1872, N. W. Morris purchased 30 acres south of Manasquan and developed a planned residential community called Sea View, with 58 building lots. Considered "a village in itself" only five years later, by 1889 Sea View was a recognized part of the larger settlement. A laudatory newspaper article described the benefits of the territory's "colonization:"
Where there was a desert, there are now splendid avenues which attract pleasure parties as they drive out in the cool of the morning or evening. Where there was wilderness, there are now beautiful lawns, shade trees, houses and gardens, built by a good class of citizens, many who have become permanent residents of the town. [2]
References
‡ Alfred Holden, HABS Historian, Towns of Sea Girt, Manasquan, and Brielle, Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS NJ-1011, 1991.
Nearby Towns: Avon-by-the-Sea Borough • Bay Head Boro • Belmar Boro • Bradley Beach Boro • Brielle Boro • Lake Como Boro • Mantoloking Boro • Neptune Twp • Sea Girt Boro • Spring Lake Boro • Spring Lake Heights Boro • Wall Twp •