Monmouth Mall memories: Bamberger's, Bun N' Burger and more live on in photos, stories

EATONTOWN - Change is nothing new to Monmouth Mall. But the changes that are coming this spring, turning it into a combination of a smaller mall and a thousand apartments, will be the the most transformative since the mysterious land grab in 1956 that turned an old farm at the Eatontown Circle into the Monmouth Shopping Center.

It has many area people feeling nostalgic for the days of their youth spent roaming its corridors, experiencing the newest fads.

"It was where we first started what they call 'adulting,' now. You'd come by yourself with your baby-sitting money and you'd go to A&S (Abraham and Straus) and get some makeup and you'd meet your friends and maybe have lunch at Le Crepe," Pamela Herzenberg, 60, told the Asbury Park Press.

Herzenberg's memories at the mall start on Nov. 28, 1969, when she was 6. One of the largest crowds ever to gather at Monmouth Shopping Center had their heads titled to the sky, eyes fixated on a figure in red falling through the air from 5,000 feet.

What's coming: Demolition work could start soon to turn Monmouth Mall into stores, apartments

It was Santa Claus parachuting from an airplane in a promotion to kick off the Christmas shopping season. At 2,000 feet, the jolly fellow, who was really the late, great Lee Guilfoyle, instructor at Lakewood Sport Parachute Club who would log over 2,500 jumps in his career, opened his chute and came gliding down into the parking lot next to Bamberger's.

"I still believed in Santa Claus. My mom used to bring me to Bamberger's all the time, what is now Macy's. That was her favorite shopping destination," Herzenberrg said.

A few short years later, on Aug. 12, 1975, to be exact, the center completed its first major metamorphosis when it changed from an outdoor center to the largest indoor mall at the Jersey Shore. The name was changed to Monmouth Mall. There was 1.55 million square feet of retail and 150 shops anchored by five large department stores: Abraham & Straus, Alexander's, Bamberger's, Hahne's, and JC Penney.

By 1978, the mall was generating $130 million in gross sales annually, and that was with Sunday closings, an old New Jersey blue law still on the books at the time but on life support.

Then the 1980s hit and the mall rat was born. It was the age of MTV and image was everything. Movies like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "The Legend of Billie Jean" emphasized to teenagers that the mall was the place to be seen.

"I grew up right in the next neighborhood over. And it was the place where everybody, all the high school kids, came to hang out. That was back when the boom box used to be a thing," Maria Ciaramella, 54, told the Asbury Park Press. "There used to be a pit by Sam Goody's on the lower level. And that was the place you knew to go to meet your friends."

Ciaramella's first job in high school was waitressing at the Bun N' Burger in the 1980s. Then she dished out pizza slices at Italian Delight before working at Express, a clothing store. On her breaks, she joined the other teenagers flicking wood chips from the tree planters at their friends.

'It's a blast from the past'

Enter Charlie Leonard.

Three years ago, Leonard, 41, of Ocean Township, started a Facebook group called Monmouth Mall Memories. As Leonard likes to say, "it's the only group where you can park your car in 1978, beat the rush-hour traffic and be home in time for 1999."

"Redevelopment is coming and things are going to change. So I wanted people to remember what the mall was like before, what it's like now, and what it's going to be. There is a future," Leonard said.

At first Leonard was excited to have 200 members. Then it was 500 people, then 800. Soon he was getting hundreds of requests a day for people wanting to join his group. As of this story, the group had nearly 11,000 members, including Ciaremella, Herzenberg and Jon Keller.

"When I see people who grew up in the area, I'm like, 'You have to go this group, it's wild. It's a blast from the past when you go to this group," Keller, 37 of Ocean Township told the Press.

Keller said he loved going to Kay-Bee Toy Store when he was a kid for action figures or to the arcade with his brothers. He was there in 1991 when two teenagers started to fight. His dad tried to pull him out but he wouldn't budge from the video game he was playing, Lucky & Wild.

"I didn't want to lose my quarter," Keller said.

Rachel Albany, 37, of Neptune, also a member of the group, had her fifth birthday party at the mall and remembers her parents taking her to the Ground Round to eat. When she was older, her parents would drop her off with her friends.

"We would just just walk up and down, up and down for hours. Sometimes we'd go to the movies, or buy something," Albany said.

The story behind the mall: Monmouth Mall and the mysterious land sale that started it

The mall as a 'village green'

Monmouth Mall has been part of the fabric of Eatontown since it opened on March 1, 1960, as the Monmouth Shopping Center. Even then, like now, there was a lot of buzz about what exactly was being built there.

Most of the land was farmland owned by Albert E. Adams. Adams died in 1954 and left his 43-acre farm to his son Oliver, according to an Asbury Park Press obituary. At the start of 1956, widespread reports began to leak in town that a Newark firm had been collecting options to sell from the owners of a number of smaller properties adjacent to Adams' farm.

Then a mystery "dummy company" from Newark called the Monmouth Restaurant and Motel Co. purchased Adams' farmland for $200,000.  That group then sold it to a developer who broke ground on the shopping center in 1958.

When it was opened two years later, some of the original tenants were Bonds Clothes, Bamberger’s, Braddock's Men's Stores, Henry's Delicatessen, Fanny Farmer Candy, Lerner Shops, Montgomery Ward, Reeds Millinery Stores, Ritz Drugs, Franklin Simon and Niesen’s Music Center.

The center transformed the area around the Eatontown Circle into what was advertised as a "true village green."

And it did its best to live up to that expectation with concerts, rallies and holiday spectacles. On a warm summer night in 1968, for example, famed jazz pianist Teddy Wilson swooned a large audience with an outdoor performance. Two months later, on a rainy day in October, presidential candidate Richard Nixon spoked to 10,000 supporters. Though soaked they gave the Republican a "rousing reception" as he promised peace abroad in Vietnam and to stop rising inflation, according to Asbury Park Press archives.

The village green is something current mall owner Kushner Cos. will look to expand in the latest mall renovations that include a total of three miles of pedestrian foot paths weaving through the 103-acre property.

The long road ahead

In the summer of 2015, Kushner started down the road to overhaul the mall as brick and mortar businesses were losing ground to e-commerce, a trend that continues. In the winter of 2016, Kushner presented its first architectural renderings to the public, which featured an odd glass tower that was going to house restaurants.

That design never stuck. Since then however, Kushner has presented a few concepts before settling on a final design which received Planning Board and Borough Council approvals last year. About 600,000 square feet of the mall's 1.5 million square feet will be demolished to make room for apartments, outdoor greens and walking paths.

When it's done, the mall will be rebranded as Monmouth Square. The property will have 1,000 apartments and roughly 900,000 square feet of retail and commercial space. While not all the tenants are known, Barnes & Noble, Macy's, Whole Foods, AMC Theater, Buffalo Wild Wings and Boscov's figure to be part of the future.

TGI Fridays closed at Monmouth Mall. Find out what is staying as mall transforms.

And while nostalgia is strong, it's not necessarily paralyzing.

"Times are changing. Shopping and retail is changing. We do a lot of traveling — my sons play baseball — and this is the new concept everywhere, apartments over a town center where everything is at your fingertips. I think this will freshen things up for the town," Ciaramella said.

When Jersey Shore native Dan Radel is not reporting the news, you can find him in a college classroom where he is a history professor. Reach him @danielradelapp; 732-643-4072; dradel@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Monmouth Mall memories: Eatontown shopping center on brink of change