The Anchorage Tavern - Historic Marker

Anchorage Tavern Sold
Morris to Mahoney

Ocean City Gazette
By Bill Kelly

The historic Anchorage Tavern, Somers Point’s oldest continuously operated business has been sold to chef Don Mahoney, who said that he plans no major changes, at least until the end of the summer.

Settlement on the $2.3 million deal was set for last week. That number includes the transfer of the liquor license, which has already taken place.

Originally built for bird gunners and baymen at the end of the last century, some date the building to the 1880s, it was called the Trenton Hotel at first, but the Anchorage name has been maintained for the pat hundred years and it has only changed hands through three families in the past half-century.

Victorian-era photographs show women in gowns and men in suits and ties relaxing on the ornately-trimmed porch during a time when life was lived at a slower pace.

Before St. Josephs church was built, Catholic masses were held in the living room of a private home until 1910 when Father John F. Sweeney, pastor of St. Augustine’s in Ocean City, began taking the ferry boat to Somers Point to say mass in the ballroom of the Anchorage, where there was no shortage of wine for the services.

After Prohibition ended in 1933, the Anchorage was issued liquor license C-5, the fifth legal license and the only one that retains its original name. For awhile the hotel and bar were operated by Judge Larry Brannigan, who was known as the local Judge Roy Bean and “the law east of Patcong Creek.”

From Brannigan the Anchorage was passed on to Charles Collins, “who sold it in 1938 to Lucille Cornaglia Thompson, who sold it to her brother Andrew “Henry” Cornaglia in 1945. From South Philadelphia, Cornaglia and his wife Luci (nee Corcione) made the place famous for good Italian food popular with families. “It was a running joke in the family that she could cook for 120 but not for four,” said Andrew Cornaglia, Jr., who took over the operations of the Anchorage when his father died in 1965.

Although he was only 20 and not old enough to drink, Andrew found himself suddenly responsible for operating the hotel, bar and restaurant. “When my father passed away, I didn’t know vodka from gin, and if it wasn’t for my mother, I would not have been able to sustain the first couple of years.”

While Bay Shores and Tony Marts were famous for the live music, the Anchorage sported a piano that, legend has it, was played by the late, great Nat King Cole, although it was the Seven-for-One draft beers that made the place famous. The Anchorage didn’t originate the idea of serving seven beers for a dollar, but they made it popular and famous with a line of 7 for 1 T-shirts that are colletor’s items today.

Pat Pirano, who worked there during the helicon days recalled that, “I was enthralled to be a 19-year old bartender in a place that was considered a legend to my generation. It was wall-to-wall people and lines to get in, with the fire marshal controlling the crowd at the door. There were 10 bartenders, nine bouncers and two glass-pickers working most nights from 1978 to 1981. Then the drinking age went back to 21, and it took a few years for it go become a local bar again.”

From the days of Andrew’s father the hotel rooms were occupied primarily by bartenders and musicians who worked the other bars and restaurants in town, with the hotel eventually closing in the 1980s and the upper floors shut off.

[See: Lynda Vandevater’s beautiful story of losing her virginity in a second floor room on Labor Day weekend in Dunes Til’ Dawn, a chapter from her book on life as a nurse in Vietnam – which became the basis for the TV program China Beach.]

Andrew Cornaglia, Jr. went on to open Mothers, an all night joint on the Longport Boulevard, and two places in Atlantic City and one in North Philadelphia before returning to operate the Anchorage as a neighborhood saloon in the early 1990s.

Andrew placed the Anchorage on the market with local real estate broker George Roberts, a former Mayor of Somers Point. Roberts apparently accepted a $100,000 down payment on the Anchorage from Bill Morris, without telling Cornaglia about it. Roberts’ subterranean sale of the Anchorage was just the tip of the iceberg, as it eventually was revealed that Roberts had a Ponzi scheme going and was responsible for the theft of millions of dollars in mortgage loans and bogus sales of properties. Roberts was convicted, served some time and was released. Although Andrew contested the sale the courts ruled that he had a legal listing and sold the property to Morris.

Morris didn’t close the Anchorage for a day, but began renovations and restoration efforts immediately, keeping the tavern pretty much the same with the juke box and two pool tables in the back. But he added a fireplace and reopened the ballroom as a dining room. Morris also introduced the then-novel concept of leasing out the kitchen, first to Tyson Merriman, who went on to purchase and restore the Tuckahoe Inn in Beesleys Point, and then to Don Mahoney.

Ironically, Andrew Cornaglia had tapped Mahoney to be his chef when he was trying to purchased the Island Inn on the Longport Boulevrd, but when that deal fell through Mahoney took over the Anchorage kitchen.

With local roots that go back to his early days working in Daniel’s kitchen, Mahoney is a hands-on chef who can be always be found on the job. So, after six years at the held of the Anchorage kitchen, when Bill Morris and his family decided to put the place on the market, Mahoney was already in a position to leverage a deal.

The liquor license changed hands a few weeks ago, while settlement on the property was yesterday, ushering in yet another era for Somers Point’s oldest and most enduring institutions.

“The Anchorage has always been something you could hold on to,” said longtime patron Nace Brenner. “It’s always been the Anchorage. When everybody else changed, the Anchorage always stayed the same. It’s like an anchor.”

As for any major changes, Mahoney said, “I’m not going to do anything until after the summer is over, then maybe we’ll enclose the porch, but if it ain’t broke, why fix it?”

Bay Avenue Nightlife - Historic Marker

300 Years at the Point - Preface & Epilogue

PREFACE

Three hundred years seems like a long time. 1693 was a time as foreign to us as space travel would have been for the people who lived then. In geological and evolutionary time however, 300 years is merely yesterday, a few heartbeats away. In Europe, 1300 years is old, while 300 year old buildings are quite common. For Americans, three centuries is an old as can be, and only a small fraction of the 10,000 years the Lenni Lenape lived here without any technological changes.

It isn’t just the centuries, the decades, the years; it is the generations and the spirit of the people who lived at that particular place over time. It is the succession of people who made Somers Point what it is today.

“The illusion that times that were are better than those that are has probably pervaded all ages,” Horace Greeley once mused. Yet we look to return to yesterday, the better days that we long for. “Those were the days,” and indeed they were special. However, it is a fallacy, I believe, that today is not as good as yesterday, and that are children can never enjoy life as much as previous generations enjoyed it.

Styles change, times change, but certain variables remain. People still like good music; they like to dance, and fall in love with each other; they like the times in which they live. It is the people who make a community and Somers Point, in 300 years, has developed a sense of community that should endure as long as our civilization.

We must strive to preserve what is historic, remember what is good, and like the Lenni Lenape before us, retell the stories of these lives, so a record of our existence and the spirit of our lives will endure forever.

EPILOGUE

In the end, the treasures of Somers Point are the same today as when they were first discovered by the early settlers. The cool breeze blows off the bay, shellfish and seafish abound, and the small town atmosphere endures.

The legends of the pirates and smugglers, though, are repeated to a new generation, and the myths are carried into a new century. The tales of the secret brick tunnel persist. Some argue the tunnel exists today. It is a passageway, they say, that when opened, will contain the treasure trove of pirates, the Somers’ family jewels and a rum runner’s forgotten stash.

Deeper still are the stone and bone relics of the Lenni Lenape Indians. Beyond that, where the tunnel opens into the sun, are the sparkling Bay waters and the pristine wilderness that existed for hundreds of thousands of years before the first settlers came 300 years ago, just yesterday.

Local Delicacy - Snapper Soup

Snapper Soup

Snapper soup is a real local delicacy and hard to find mainly because snapper turtles are hard to get, mean to catch, sloppy to clean and complicated to cook properly, but those who have been doing it for decades – say over fifty years, keep doing it because, well it’s really good to enjoy and a fine tradition to continue.

You don’t have to be a connoisseur to appreciate snapper, but if you like it, you know where to get it – Greogory’s, the Crab Trap and the Point Diner are three places you can get it locally.

Although there is a white, southern style snapper turtle soup that’s mixed with vegetables, but I’m talking about the local snapper turtle soup recipe that is of a thick, brown gravey, the origins of which can be traced to Old Original Bookbiiners (125 Walnut Street, Philadelphia).

As Craig LaBan called attention to it in the Philadelphia Inquirer (Sunday, June 12, 2005), “We are famous for preserving every other aspect of our history, but why, I wonder, has Philadelphia let so many of its old restaurants drift away? Our dinning scene is many things – youthful, sophisticated…but we have virtually no connection left to the grand restaurants of yore, those brassy old spots where snapper soup tastes as it did when our grandparents tipped the sherry bottle with extra fervor, but we are poorer the fact, and missing a crucial piece of the family puzzle.”

LaBan described the true bill as tasting like “dark as molasses with a trace of fragrant spices and a citrus zest that dances across the sherry-splashed broth like an exotic trade wind.”

While LeBan was critical of the snapper soup when Old Original Bookbinder’s reopened in June, 2005 under the stewardship of John Taxin, he lamented that“…we are poorer and missing a crucial piece of the family puzzle.”

Well, after over a century, if the Taxin family lost the recipe for their original snapper soup, Gregory’s has it.

Just as the Taxin family maintained Bookbinder’s traditions through generations, the fifth generation of the Gregory family is now running Gregory’s in Somers Point. Headed by cousins Walt and Greg Gregory, sons of the late Walt and Elmer Gregory, the sons of old man “Pop” Gregory, the kitchen today is in the hands of Joe and Paul Gregory, graduates of the Culinary Arts Institute at Atlantic-Cape College.

Few people, other than the above gentlemen, know the family recipe for snapper soup, as it was passed on to Pop Gregory from a Bookbinder’s chef back before the war at the original Gregory’s bar in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. Pop Gregory spiced it up a little bit to make it unique, and put it on the menu when he opened Gregory’s in Somers Point in 1946.

Pop taught his sons Elmer and Walter and Rosie Gregory, and they taught Greg Gregory, who remembers when they used to buy their snappers from a Piney and kill them in the backyard by cutting off their heads and letting them run around headless. Then they hanged them from a clothes line to dry them before cutting off the shell and skinning the meat.

One of the benefits of living in these parts is being so close to the Jersey Pines were there is an almost unlimited supply of snapper turtles that thrive in the fresh water cedar lakes.

Having grown up summers on a Mirror Lake lagoon in Browns Mills, in the heart of the Jersey Pines, I know how to catch snapper turtles, as I did it many times unintentionally. They’re pretty nasty devils with a sharp bite and once they get a hold of something its like a vice and they don’t let go. While they prefer baby ducks they pull down from a mother’s brood as it crosses the lake, they are caught on fishing line or in nets. My former neighbor used to catch them and only keep the big ones – two feet or more. If you get one on the dock you give it the end of a long stick to bit and then you can pick it up by the tail, but must be careful that it doesn’t get a hold of one of your fingers.

Now the snapper turtle meat comes pre-cleaned and cut but is still supplied by the grandson of Pop Gregory’s original supplier. It’s a family thing all around.

For awhile Gregory also let a non-family member in on the secret, and before he went to work down at Dolphin Dock, Jimmy Simmons would go by Gregory’s whenever they needed a new batch of snapper soup and prepare it. Simmons was also one of the most prodigious fishermen on Great Egg bay, who caught his share of stripers, but died tragically when a boat he was working on fell off its mount and crushed him.

In any case, making snapper soup from scratch is a very difficult and complicated process, so much so that it’s not really worth it to make it yourself, and just going out to buy a bowl is easier and you couldn’t possibly make it better than they do.

Gregory’s prepares a large multi-gallon pot two or three times a week, depending on the season, and they spice it up to make it a little bit different from the Crab Trap or Point Diner, and have their regular clientele who come in once or twice a month just for the soup.

Served with bread and butter, crackers and a snifter of sherry that’s added for flavor, you have all the workings of a true local delicacy. And don’t eat the bay leaf, that’s only one of the traditional touches.




Bookbinder's Snapper Soup INGREDIENTS: WATER, TOMATO PUREE (WATER, TOMATO PASTE), COOKED EGG WHITE, CARROTS, WHEAT FLOUR, SHERRY WINE, MARGARINE (SOYBEAN OIL, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN OIL, WATER, SALT, LECITHIN, MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, SODIUM BENZOATE AS PRESERVATIVE, ARTIFICIAL COLOR AND FLAVOR, VITAMIN A PALMITATE), ONIONS, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, SNAPPER TURTLE, SALT, SPICES, CARAMEL COLOR, DEHYDRATED GARLIC

• 1½ pounds beef or veal knuckles, 2-inch pieces
• ¼ cup butter melted
• 1 cup chopped onion
• ½ cup chopped celery
• ½ cup chopped carrot
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 whole clove
• 1 small bay leaf
• ¼ teaspoon pepper
• ¼ teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
• ¼ cup all-purpose flour
• 2 10½-ounce cans beef broth
• 8-ounce can tomatoes
• 1 pound frozen turtle, thawed and diced
• 3 cups water
• ½ cup dry sherry
• Dash bottled hot pepper sauce
• 1 lemon slice
•

In a shallow roasting pan combine the first 10 ingredients. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. Push the bones to one side; blend in flour.

Lower oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake 30 minutes longer. Transfer to a soup pot, add beef broth and tomatoes. Cover, simmer 45 minutes. In a large pot combine turtle meat and water. Cook, covered, until meat is tender, about 1 hour. Remove meat to cool. Reserve 2 cups cooking liquid.

Add turtle meat, reserved liquid, sherry, hot pepper sauce and lemon to soup pot. Cover and simmer for about 20 minutes. Remove lemon. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

800 Bay Ave. Corleto's Marina Sold

Sketch of Corleto's by Robert Barnsey "Caveman" Barnes


Ocean City Gazette
Wednesday, Dec. 11, 1996

Somers Point’s oldest and largest unrestored landmark is in the process of being sold, renovated and restored into an upscale hotel, restaurant and marina.

Corleto’s Marina at 800 Bay Ave., on the corner of New York and Bay avenues, overlooks the Somers Point municipal beach and the bay. It has remained pretty much the same as when Ernie Corleto purchased it in 1962 when it was known as the Point Tavern.

Corleto, a former Philadelphia gas station operator, sold the liquor license, which was relocated to the Somers Point Shopping Center and is now the Point Pub. Corleto continued to run the marina. For the past 35 years Corleto’s has been popular with the local fishermen and boaters mainly because it’s one of the last vestiges of old Somers Point.

John and Susan Meyer, neighbors from down the street, have entered into an agreement to purchase the property, a deal contingent on the city approving the plans they have to establish an upscale hotel, restaurant and marina.

That approval was granted Monday by the Somers Point Zoning Board.

Ernie Corleto, now 79 years old, has decided to retire and has moved most of his stuff out, including the vintage 1934 pickup truck with boat crib and derrick that graced the front yard for the past quarter century.

“They were part of history; now they are history,” he reflected during a recent tour of the property.

Whatever the future holds, the place, which dates to the mid-1800s, has an intriguing past.

“When I moved here 36 years ago,” Ernie recalls, “a neighbor came over and told me the building was 112 years old,” which would date it to around 1850.

In previous incarnations it was the Grand View Hotel, when Mrs. M. Cormey was the proprietor, while more recently it was the Point Tavern. For awhile it was run by the Latz family, who popularized the Knife & Fork restaurant in Atlantic City.

Ernie Coleto bought it from two guys – McGeen and Gliven, though he knows it had been operated by organist Bobby Brian. Another entertainer, Bill “Vaughan” Comfort, is also known to have performed there when it was the Point Tavern.

Ernie Corleto has been on the scene daily since 1962.

“They’re all good memories,” he says with a smile from under his old seaman’s cap. “I don’t have any bad memories. I didn’t have any problems with people. All the summers were god ones and no one year stands out, except for the storms. The one thing that really stands out, the only thing that really worried me was the storm of ’62. That was the first year we were here. But we weathered that one.”

And it’s been relatively smooth sailing since then.

“We spent a lot of time sitting on the steps. That’s a daily thing,” he explained. “A lot of fish were caught and a lot of fish stories were told.”

The place has changed over the years, but only a little bit.

From old photos you can see where various additions were added to maintain the structure over the years, where there were wings and rooms that are no longer there. Now additional changes are planned.

John Mayer reached an agreement with Corleto to purchase the property, an agreement contingent on Mayer receiving approvals and variances from the city. Their plans have met the approval of the city Historic Commission, the Zoning Board granted the project a use variance, area and bulk variances plus preliminary and final site plan approval at their meeting on Monday, Dec. 9.

Mayer and his wife Susan told the Historic Commission they intend to refurbish the marina, restore the building and reopen as a Cape May style upscale bed-and-breakfast hotel/marina that will include eight rooms, a restaurant and 100 boat slips.

Renown interior designer Charles Tilly, who the Mayer’s met in New York, will handle the interior decorating, making the hotel and interesting place to visit.

The Historic Commission could only rule on the exterior plans, which include the replacement of the cedar shingle roof with fiberglass shingles and the construction of porches, decks and a turret on the southwest corner of the building. While the Historic Commission approved these plans and commended the Mayer’s desire to restore the historic structure.

Other issues remain, however, including the acquisition of a liquor license which will be harder to obtain in Somers Point, where there are already 20 of them.

Although a license to serve the public was sold recently for approximately $150,000 (Daniels to Doc’s), and there is at least one other license for sale, the cost of a public license would be a small part of the $2 million considered necessary for the project. As the building was the site of the Point Tavern for many years, it has such a previous use. But Mayer also wants to consider the option of obtaining a private club license.

As the hotel will be an upscale one, little off-the-street clientele is expected, but there will be an in-house yacht club and fishing club as well as facilities for special occasions and functions, like weddings and meetings when booze will be required.

“At one time it was a classy joint,” Mayer said. “People used to come here all dressed up in top hats and tails and I want to make it classy again.”

According to Mayer’s plan, “It will have a split personality, with a seashore motif on the water side, where the ballroom and restaurant are, and a Victorian there on the street side, where the rooms and guest quarters are located.”

A new kitchen is planned for the north wall, a small bar on the south side, with glass walls facing the bay. Eight guest rooms on the second and third floors will have their own baths, and bay view or balcony. One will be a two-room suite, while all the guests will share a picturesque lounge overlooking the water.

The marina will accommodate 80 seasonal boat slips at competitive prices, with 20 slips reserved for transients. A barbeque pit is planned for the boaters.

“People come here from all over,” Mayer said. “They buy a boat, they want to go out on the water, they bring in their fish, they want to meet people, they want to eat and drink with their friends and they want to be a part of this area.”

As John Meyer puts it, “We want to take the old Grand View Hotel and turn it into a nice place again. Not just for Somers Point; we want to make it the jewel of the Jersey Shore.”

As the former owner of Maye’s Marina, which is now the Somers Point Marina, Mayer has the background and ability to operate the marina, while his wife has experience in marketing.

Susan wants to utilize her experiences with shopping mall developer Crown and Mary and Hecht department stores. As Susan Meyer told the Historic Commission, “There’s nothing like it on the water, even in Cape May. It’s an unbelievable property that’s always been there, but its been ignored. People ride by and just don’t see it. It’s almost invisible at the moment, but we want to make it a landmark attraction for the area.”

A report on the development of Bay Avenue also featured Corleto’s as the primary attraction.

“We’re very excited about the Bay Avenue project and firm believers that it’s going to work,” Mayer said.

A city sponsored study concludes that the Bay Avenue project, in order to succeed, would have to be a joint effort on the part of the city, state and the private sector. So far the private sector is making all the major moves and it will be hard for the city to hinder preserving, restoring and upgrading historic properties.

Asked what he’s going to do first now that he’s retired, Ernie Corleto said, “I’m going to take Lucky the dog to have a shampoo before I take her home to Longport.”

Nine years of the boatyard will be hard to soak out of the old salty dog.

Ernie and John Mayer at Ernie's Marina

PHOTOS By Rich McNally

Ernie ran his marina on Bay Avenue next to the Somers Point Beach for decades. Before Ernie it was the Point Pub, a very popular place run by Vaughan Comfort, an entertainer who played the piano. The liquor license was moved to the Somers Point Shopping Center. After he left the Point Pub Vaughn Comfort opened a new joint on the circle, which was up on pilings and featured singing waiters. One of the singing waiters from North Jersey got his job when he auditioned with Frank Sinatra, who didn't get the job because Vaughn Comfort said he couldn't sing loud enough.

Ernie converted the huge dining room into a bait and tackle workshop for his boatyard, and the place stayed pretty much the same for a few decades, as Rich McNally's photo attest.

John Mayer's family owned Mayer's Marina on Bay Avenue, down the street from Ernie. He sold his own marina and bought Ernie's, and took me and Rich McNally for a tour of the place before he renovated it.

Shortly after these photos were taken, John Mayer had the place totally rebuilt at the cost of over $2 million. He tried to establish a private yacht club that could offer liquor to its members, but when that effort failed he sold the place to Dr. Ira Trocki, who moved the liquor license from the old Tony Marts/Egos, which now sits empty.

Johnny Mayer moved to Florida with his wife. For awhile the place was known as Tuckers, and served fine Italian food. Trocki has since leased it to a variety of people who opened it under different names. I think it is now called by its address. Eight hundred something Bay Avenue.

Some of the Regulars at the Old Anchorage

Nick and Kathy on the left and Winnie with the camera on the right. That might be Lisa in between.










The late Great Charles Cox and Barbara













Pat the bartender