The Garfield Tea House in Long Branch, New Jersey, is the only remaining structure directly related to President James A. Garfield's final trip to the Jersey Shore. The Garfield Tea House was built from the railroad ties used to lay the emergency track that transported a dying President Garfield from the nearby Elberon train station to the oceanfront cottage where he died 12 days later.
Garfield was a regular visitor to Long Branch. Less than four months after taking office, the president was shot on July 2, 1881, while waiting to board a train from Washington to Long Branch by Charles J. Guiteau, a delusional religious fanatic who was disgruntled by failed efforts to secure a federal post. [1]
On September 5, 1881, more than half a mile of railroad tracks were laid out in less than 24 hours by local residents when they learned that the president, who was in poor condition, was coming to Long Branch from Washington DC to help him recover from his gunshot wounds. Rather than requiring the president to move by a horse-drawn carriage over rough roads, the tracks enabled Garfield to be brought directly to the front door of the oceanfront Francklyn cottage from the local Elberon train station. The railroad spur ran down the middle of a local road, which today is Lincoln Avenue. [2] President Garfield arrived in Elberon on the evening of September 6. [3]
After Garfield died 12 days later on September 19, [4] the tracks were torn up and the wooden ties were purchased by actor Oliver Byron, who had local carpenter William Presley build the Garfield Tea House with them. It first stood in the yard of Byron's summer cottage. One of the original rails is used as the ridgepole supporting the roof. The original colors of the building were red, white, and blue; today it is red and white. After several moves, including one to the Presley home in North Long Branch, the tea house now rests on the Long Branch Historical Museum grounds on Ocean Avenue near the former site of Francklyn cottage. The remains of the railroad spur tracks near the former cottage became part of a small one-lane residential road near the beach which is now called Garfield Road. [1]
The Long Branch Historical Museum Association, which owns the structure, has mounted an aggressive effort to restore the Church of the Presidents and its grounds, on which the tea house rests. [5] Restoration of the tea house is part of the four-phase preservation plan to preserve the Church of the Presidents, currently in its second phase of restoration. The Garfield Tea House is located at 1260 Ocean Avenue in Long Branch, just across the street from the Atlantic Ocean.
Preservation of the tea house will require lifting the building above grade, excavating to create a level surface, pouring a six-inch reinforced slab, and lowering the building onto the new foundation. The wood shingle roof must be replaced and the paint stripped from the exterior. Deteriorated railroad ties will be epoxy-consolidated; they will not be replaced.
Once the Church of the Presidents is restored, it and the Garfield Tea House will open to the public, serving as a museum to the presidents and people who vacationed here, and as a center of study of Long Branch and Jersey Shore history, particularly during the Gilded Age and especially of presidential recreation at that time.
Long Branch is a beachside city in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 30,719, reflecting a decline of 621 (-2.0%) from the 31,340 counted in the 2000 Census, which had in turn increased by 2,682 (+9.4%) from the 28,658 counted in the 1990 Census. As of the 2010 census, it was the 6th-most-populous municipality in Monmouth County and had the 71st-highest population of any municipality in New Jersey.
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Elberon is an unincorporated community that is part of Long Branch in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. The area is served as United States Postal Service ZIP code 07740.
The Church of the Presidents is a former Episcopal chapel on the Jersey Shore where seven United States presidents worshipped. It was visited by presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, and Woodrow Wilson. All except Grant were in office when they paid their visits to the church.
James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, was shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., at 9:30 am on Saturday, July 2, 1881. He died in Elberon, New Jersey, 79 days later on September 19, 1881. The shooting occurred less than four months into his term as president. Garfield's assassin was Charles J. Guiteau, whose motive was revenge against Garfield for an imagined political debt, and getting Chester A. Arthur elevated to president. Guiteau was convicted of Garfield's murder and executed by hanging one year after the shooting.
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Charles Gilbert Francklyn was a British-American capitalist and industrialist who was prominent in New York society during the Gilded Age.
The Ulysses S. Grant Cottage was the Summer White House of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant in Elberon, a part of Long Branch, New Jersey. Grant vacationed at the cottage starting in the summer of 1867, and thereafter spent three months of every summer there until 1885. He held cabinet meetings and composed parts of his memoirs at the cottage. The presence of Grant and the cottage helped popularize Elberon as a place for the elite to meet; a status that only faded when the railroad came to town and it became more accessible. The cottage was demolished in 1963 by its then owner, who did not possess the funds necessary to preserve the building. The site is today a grassy field.
Coordinates: 40°15′45″N73°59′25″W / 40.262601°N 73.990383°W