SANDY HOOK -- A group trying to save a 122-year-old house on Sandy Hook asked the park's historic planning committee to keep the last remnant of a former beach resort there from the wrecking ball.
For their efforts, the loosely formed group called Friends of Highland Beach got a sympathetic ear from the Fort Hancock 21st Century Advisory Committee on Friday but no promise to intervene.
Instead, members of the committee suggested the group renew its efforts to secure a national historic designation for the last remaining building of the former Highland Beach Resort or that have the house moved from the park.
"The Sandlass House is the last remaining element linked to a phenomenon of social change along the shore region," said Susan Sandlass Gardiner, granddaughter of the founder of Highland Beach Resort. "We as the public care about what happens to our local history."
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After the meeting, which was attended by 18 resort supporters, Gardiner said she was pleased at getting the chance to make her case before the committee and now has to weigh her options. She said she felt initial conversations with park service officials died when she couldn't get the house listed as a historic site in 2012.
"It's reopened discussions," she said.
In a letter to the committee, Monmouth County historian Randall Gabrielan said Highland Beach Resort has in important part in the history of how the public enjoyed the Shore in New Jersey.
"Highland Beach...is important because the public and recreational New Jersey ocean shore began there," Gabrielan wrote. "Various places now claim - nearly all without merit - that 'the Jersey Shore begins here,' but for the better part of a century the Jersey Shore began at Sandlass's."
The Sandlass house, as it looked before the family moved out in 1963. The National Park Service says the house, on Sandy Hook, has to be torn down, but family members and some residents want it preserved. (Photo courtesy of Susan Sandlass Gardiner)
Started in the 1880s by William Sandlass Jr., Highland Beach Resort started as a destination for daily Shore excursions by residents of North Jersey and New York. Over its 75 years on what is now the southern end of Sandy Hook, the resort eventually became the first of the beach clubs that sprung up between Sea Bright and Long Branch along that Monmouth County peninsula.
The committee was meeting to discuss options for preserving historic buildings in the Fort Hancock district of the park, which is just north of the former resort.
Chris Brenner, a Fair Haven resident who made a documentary about the resort, said the committee should be concerned with the history of buildings in the entire park, not just the former military installation.
"We hope that somehow...we find a way to salvage that so people understand the importance of the history that took place there," Brenner said.
But two new members of the committee, Jeffrey Tyler and Michael Walsh, questioned whether their group had jurisdiction beyond the Fort Hancock district, where the committee is seeking to lease 36 historic buildings in an effort to preserve them.
"This sounds very exciting but is it the purview of this mission to even address the Sandlass property?" Tyler said. "If on the other hand, there's something that socially ties to the whole history, this could be the thing that gets everybody looking at (Fort Hancock.)."
Daniel Saunders, administrator of New Jersey's Historic Preservation Office in the Department of Environmental Protection, said his office considered a historic designation for the house, but it did not meet the criteria under the "architectural merit" category. He suggested the group seek designation again, but this time as a place associated with a significant event.
Atlantic Highlands resident Jean Howson said she was on a committee that prepared an illustrated history of the area before the new Route 36 Highlands Bridge was built in 2010. Highlands Beach Resort is included in that illustrated history, she said, but she noted the posters, which were supposed to be erected along pathways at Sandy Hook, never made it to their intended designation and are instead hanging at the Twin Lights historic lighthouse in Highlands across from Sandy Hook.
Sandy Hook Superintendent Jennifer Nersesian said the house, at the entrance to the park, technically falls within the historic district but does not "contribute" to that historic designation.
She said it would be up to the committee to decide whether the house falls within its purview. She said that while the National Park System has no immediate plans to demolish the house, it also has no plans to try to save the house, which was damaged by Hurricane Sandy and sits in a flood-prone area close to the Highlands Bridge.
If the house were moved, she said, it would have to be relocated outside the park. She said the park service doesn't have the money to renovate the home, which has been vacant for more than three years.
"We'd certainly be open to other solutions, among which is if somebody wanted to take the building - if they have the money to move it and preserve it and find a site for it - we'd be willing to make that available," she said.
MaryAnn Spoto may be reached at mspoto@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @MaryAnnSpoto. Find NJ.com on Facebook.