DAILY
Sports
Lifestyle
Obituaries
Classifieds
Crossword Puzzle

A Few NJ Facts
Not many people know about these.

THE PRESS
Write to the Editor
Send us a news tip
How are we doing?
Email & Phone

Golden sunsets in Villas get real estate's last laugh

• Spectacular Delaware Bay sunsets are turning the Villas into a Gold Coast of sorts. The butt of jokes and low

real-estate prices for decades, the question is, 'Who's

laughing now?'

By RICHARD DEGENER

Staff Writer, (609) 463-6711

LOWER TOWNSHIP -- Local lore has it that Joe Millman won the Villas in a poker game. (Click for a map)

Millman died decades ago and nobody really knows if the story is true. Even the old-timers aren't sure where fact meets folklore when stories about the original developer of this Delaware Bay community come up.

But one thing they do know: Back then, it probably was a penny-ante, nickel-and-dime match, but today it's quickly becoming a high-stakes game.

Local real-estate agent Dan Senico knows.

Back in 1929, Millman sold Senico's father-in-law a house on East Miami Avenue for $895, with just $10 down. Senico, who owns Apex Realty here on Bayshore Road, recently sold a house on the bay for $650,000.

"The Villas isn't what it used to be, that's for sure," Senico said. During a recent drive around town, Senico rattled off sale prices that would make Millman turn over in his grave.

"This one over there was bought by two doctors for $525,000. And this one was $399,000 just for the lot, the foundation and a building permit," Senico said.

The same thing is happening just to the south in the Cape May Beach area between North Cape May and the Villas. One property recently sold for $749,500.

It's a far cry from what Senico called "the two-bedroom good life" of yesteryear. A 1935 advertisement for what then was known as the Wildwood Villas lists bungalows for as low as $650, including the land, water (a hand pump in the kitchen) and an outhouse. Back then, you could phone Pennypacker 4538 to set up a free "inspection trip."

"Wildwood Villas fills a great present-day need. It offers a chance, to even those of very small means, to own a cozy little bungalow at the seashore and to solve the vacation problem for all time," states the brochure.

So how did that cozy little bungalow become a house that could sit on the dunes in Stone Harbor or Loveladies? Senico said the sun and the Delaware Bay are the keys.

"When that big orange ball is setting in the west, it doesn't get any better. It's like Key West," Senico said.

But it's a Key West with parking and without traffic congestion. It's a community where children can ride their bikes anywhere they want to go. There are no parking meters or beach badges either. Senico said many of his customers are coming from the increasingly crowded Cape May area.

It all began with Millman, described as a good and honest man by those who remember him, hawking vacant lots in the midst of the Great Depression. Jack Linnington, 72, a former postmaster here whose father bought a bungalow for $250 in 1931, said Millman could sell just about anything.

"Joe Millman was a hell of a salesman. I knew him to take a guy's gold watch for a deposit. He made a lot of sales in police stations and fire houses in Philly because police and firemen were the only ones working in the Depression," Linnington said.

During his childhood Linnington never remembered the town being called "the Villas" as it is now. It always was called Wildwood Villas or Miami Beach, a name still used in the north end of town.

Both were marketing moves to add luster to the development. Millman came up with using Wildwood's name while a separate Philadelphia real-estate company developed the Miami Beach tract.

Linnington remembers walking the dirt streets barefoot and spending most of his days fishing. The town was full of fishing piers that went far out into the bay and the shore was lined with wooden rowboats.

"We'd row out a quarter-mile and fill a tub in two hours. We had croakers coming out our ears," Linnington said.

Nights for the young were spent at pavilions on the bay listening to music. For adults, there were 13 "taprooms" in town; places where you could get seven beers for a dollar.

"I remember in the mid-to-late-'30's, a lot of religious people tried to restore Prohibition. They wanted to make Lower Township dry. They beat it by getting all the summer people to register to vote here," Linnington said.

The town usually was empty in November, but that year it was packed as all the summer folks came to vote against banning alcohol.

Back then, every house had hand pumps, kerosene lamps and outhouses. The east side of Bayshore Road was mostly farms, including the Bates Turkey Farm where St. Raymond's School now stands.

"They used to harvest the king crabs (horseshoe crabs) with a horse and wagon and dump them in their fields for fertilizer," Linnington said.

The first public sewer and water arrived in 1970 and that was when the property values jumped, said Linnington, who sold real estate after leaving the post-office job.

"Homes sold in the 1960s for $4,000 or $5,000 doubled in price overnight," Linnington said.

The Villas always was a blue-collar town and the type of place where hard work paid off. Former Mayor Robert Conroy said his father arrived from Philadelphia in 1951 with just $300 and became a successful businessman.

"Dad ran a hardware store and my mother delivered lumber by truck," said Conroy, who still owns the hardware store and builds houses since leaving politics.

In the 1950s, as the town grew, it even had its own radio show, "the Villas Home Town Hour," and a newspaper, the bayshore edition of the Cape May Star and Wave.

Gracie Mulligan, 88, who has run the Villas 5-and-10 here for more than a half-century, recalls bungalows selling for "$199 with $25 down and $5 a month."

She remembers her father clearing the woods to build his taproom, Smitty's, and said the athletic complex named after her late husband, Clem Mulligan, was once the site of the town dump.

"Where Mulligan field is now was a gravel pit. They took the dirt to make the roads in the Villas and we carried our trash back there and dumped it," Mulligan said.

Even though real-estate values are skyrocketing along the bay, some agents say the real lure of the Villas is that inland sections still offer very affordable houses. It's a mix you don't find in most shore towns.

"You can still buy a modest dwelling for $50,000. We have the last frontier where a working man can still afford a seashore home. You can't buy one in Avalon, and we're losing Cape May and West Cape May," Senico said.

Herman Tolz, who has been in real estate here for decades, said a house a block or two from the bay still can be had for $50,000 to $75,000.

"It's the lowest of all beachfront communities," Tolz noted.

So what about the legend? Did Millman win the Villas land in a poker game? And if he did, what was the winning hand?

Tolz isn't sure, but he has a memory of Millman with his shirt sleeves rolled up playing poker.

"He didn't pay much for it," Tolz said.