Harvey Cedars Hotel

The "'Harvey Cedars Hotel" is the last remaining historic hotel of its size located on Long Beach Island, NJ in the town of Harvey Cedars (although at the time it was built, it was known as High Point). It was begun in the 1830s as a fishing and hunting hotel on the then, scarcely-inhabited Long Beach Island.

Originally a small hotel, it was built expanded in the 1870s and 1880s. A large renovation, completed in 1903, led to the 3-storey structure which was kept rather similar until the late 1990s when sections of it were gutted and rebuilt, completely out of style with the Victorian architecture. It served as the Harvey Cedars Hotel until around the 1910s when it went out of business. In the early 1920s the property was purchased by the Philadelphia YWCA and turned into Camp Whelen, a Christian summer camp for young girls.

Camp Whelen survived until the Depression. After shutting down due to declining attendance, the hotel was abandoned for about 10 years.

At this time Presbyterian minister Jack Murray purchased the hotel, and converted it into Harvey Cedars Presbyterian Bible Conference. After several years of directing the conference, Jack left the operations to Al Oldham. The name was changed to Harvey Cedars Bible Conference, and was run by Al until the mid-90's when the director position was passed on to his son, Jon Oldham.

Years of neglect to the physical property led to decisions to renovate in the '90's up to the present time.

These renovations to the original hotel have distorted it beyond recognition in some areas. Attention was not paid to the historic fabric of the hotel. Much of the hotel has been gutted and renovated to make it appear as a modern hotel, and not the historic hotel it was.

It appears the historic structure will continue to be insensitively renovated, despite its extreme importance to the history of Long Beach Island. All other historic hotels of the same size located on the island have long since been destroyed.

For information on Harvey Cedars Bible Conference, follow the link. For more old photographs click on Harvey Cedars Bible Conference and Camp Whelen as they both occupied the same building during different eras.