Riverside-Pleasure Bay Park, Long Branch, New Jersey

In 1890, Thomas Gedney Patten, then owner/operator of the Sea Bright & Long Branch Steamboat Company, started construction of a luxury home in Long Branch along Manhasset Creek. In 1898, the Patten Steamship Line and the Atlantic Coast Electric Railway jointly built the Riverside Hotel and the Riverside Park on adjacent Pleasure Bay. The park was well known, and offered a fish pond, merry-go-round, picnic groves, and a floating theater on the Shrewsbury River. That was at the turn of the century when Long Branch was regarded as the summer capital of the country.