Great Auditorium
The Great Auditorium was constructed in 1894 and is mostly unchanged. The wooden building rests on bridge-like steel trusses laid on stone foundations. Aside from the trusses. It features numerous "barn door" entrances with colored glass, dormers, and panels that open for ventilation. Originally, the Auditorium was claimed to hold an audience of almost 10,000. Many of smaller, wooden seats were replaced in later years with cushioned, theater-style seating reducing capacity to an audience of 6,250 persons.
The Auditorium has been called, "the state’s most wondrous wooden structure, soaring and sweeping, alive with the sound of music". Its superb acoustics, resulting from its barrel-vaulted wooden ceiling, have been widely acclaimed; famed conductor Leonard Bernstein once compared it to Carnegie Hall. In the days before electronic amplification, this allowed a preacher to be heard throughout the vast space. The building features a lighting system advanced for its time: arching rows of bulbs hanging from the varnished wood ceiling paneling. Also novel is a painted representation of a waving American flag (c. 1916) covered with light bulbs that flash in an undulating manner. Illuminated signs, possibly the very oldest surviving examples of that type (1894), proclaim "Holiness to the Lord" and "So be ye holy," a reflection of the emphasis at camp meetings. The illuminated Memorial Cross was placed on the Auditorium's front facade at the end of World War II in 1946.
Ocean Grove is a unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) located within Neptune Township. It had a population of 3,342 at the 2010 United States Census. Ocean Grove is noted for its abundant examples of Victorian architecture and the Great Auditorium, acclaimed as "the state’s most wondrous wooden structure, soaring and sweeping, alive with the sound of music".
Ocean Grove was founded in 1869 as an outgrowth of the camp meeting movement in the United States, when a group of Methodist clergymen, formed the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association to develop and operate a summer camp meeting site on the New Jersey seashore. By the early 20th century, the popular Christian meeting ground became known as the "Queen of Religious Resorts." The community's land is still owned by the camp meeting association and leased to individual homeowners and businesses. Ocean Grove remains the longest-active camp meeting site in the United States. [Wikipedia]
Great Auditorium
The Great Auditorium was constructed in 1894 and is mostly unchanged. The wooden building rests on bridge-like steel trusses laid on stone foundations. Aside from the trusses. It features numerous "barn door" entrances with colored glass, dormers, and panels that open for ventilation. Originally, the Auditorium was claimed to hold an audience of almost 10,000. Many of smaller, wooden seats were replaced in later years with cushioned, theater-style seating reducing capacity to an audience of 6,250 persons.
The Auditorium has been called, "the state’s most wondrous wooden structure, soaring and sweeping, alive with the sound of music". Its superb acoustics, resulting from its barrel-vaulted wooden ceiling, have been widely acclaimed; famed conductor Leonard Bernstein once compared it to Carnegie Hall. In the days before electronic amplification, this allowed a preacher to be heard throughout the vast space. The building features a lighting system advanced for its time: arching rows of bulbs hanging from the varnished wood ceiling paneling. Also novel is a painted representation of a waving American flag (c. 1916) covered with light bulbs that flash in an undulating manner. Illuminated signs, possibly the very oldest surviving examples of that type (1894), proclaim "Holiness to the Lord" and "So be ye holy," a reflection of the emphasis at camp meetings. The illuminated Memorial Cross was placed on the Auditorium's front facade at the end of World War II in 1946.
Ocean Grove is a unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) located within Neptune Township. It had a population of 3,342 at the 2010 United States Census. Ocean Grove is noted for its abundant examples of Victorian architecture and the Great Auditorium, acclaimed as "the state’s most wondrous wooden structure, soaring and sweeping, alive with the sound of music".
Ocean Grove was founded in 1869 as an outgrowth of the camp meeting movement in the United States, when a group of Methodist clergymen, formed the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association to develop and operate a summer camp meeting site on the New Jersey seashore. By the early 20th century, the popular Christian meeting ground became known as the "Queen of Religious Resorts." The community's land is still owned by the camp meeting association and leased to individual homeowners and businesses. Ocean Grove remains the longest-active camp meeting site in the United States. [Wikipedia]