Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Beaver Park Aerial View Then & Now

Here's a vintage postcard (courtesy of Dennis Lamont) that shows an aerial view of what is now known as Beaver Park North at Oak Point Road.

To make sure I identified the two beachfront buildings on the vintage postcard correctly, I showed this postcard (via email) to Frank and Carolyn Sipkovsky. Frank had worked at the Beaver House and knew Walt Rothgery, the man who ran it.

Frank and Carolyn confirmed that the building on the left is the Beaver House restaurant, and the one on the right is the Boat Club.

The current aerial view (below) provided by Bing Maps shows the massive changes that have taken place since the time of the postcard. The beach seems smaller. The picnic area, as well as many of the trees, are a casualty of a huge storage building. The Beaver House is also gone, apparently replaced by the other storage building.

Although it's not in either view, there used to be a motel on the property as well. I'll spotlight it on tomorrow's post.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is nothing left of the beach,shocking! Are the cottages still tthere? Alot of fun back in the 50 and 1960's judy

Wireless.Phil said...

Last photo, to the right or west of Beaver North, is the old Hole-in-the-wall beach, you had to cross railroad property to get to it, there was Zero parking, if you parked along Rt 6, the cops gave you a ticket.

I was told as a child that there really was a wall of dirt with a hole in it that you went through to get to the beach, but a storm washed it away. I don't remember much about that because as I got older we had a boat and would approach from the lake.

The photo with the lawnmower and the one with the backhoe appear to be the motel behind Chris restaurant further to the east.

Wireless.Phil said...

Now the city eill demolish the 4 old motels, so now we can have more homeless on the streets. Hopefully they gave them the time to move out.
I wonder if someone wanted the land along the lake for a new home?