SEASIDE PARK, N.J. – At the time, there was nothing historic about the pictures. It was simply a rainy September day on the Seaside Park boardwalk, summer was winding down and Shore News Network was building its photo archive for the end of summer.
The photographs, taken for Shore News Network and JTOWN Magazine in September 2012, captured everyday life around Funtown Pier and the boardwalk connecting Seaside Park and Seaside Heights. Nobody taking those quick stock photos could have known that within weeks, Superstorm Sandy would tear through the barrier island — or that less than a year later, fire would devastate the boardwalk again.
- The photographs were taken during an ordinary rainy day in September 2012, near the end of the summer season.
- Superstorm Sandy struck the Jersey Shore the following month, severely damaging Funtown Pier and the surrounding boardwalk.
- In September 2013, a massive fire swept through the Seaside Park and Seaside Heights boardwalk, completing a remarkable transformation of the area.
An Ordinary September Day That Became History
There was no breaking news assignment that day.
The goal was much simpler: get some stock photographs of Funtown Pier, the boardwalk and the people still spending time at the Shore as another summer faded into fall.
It was raining. The skies were gray. September had arrived, and the crowds of July and August were gone.
The pictures weren’t carefully staged or shot with the expectation that they would someday become historical documents. They were quick snapshots of a place that seemed permanent.
That is what makes them different today.
They show Funtown Pier and the surrounding boardwalk not as a disaster scene, construction site or piece of Jersey Shore history, but simply as people knew it.
Rides. Games. Storefronts. Boardwalk signs. Wet wooden planks. People going about an ordinary day at the Shore.
Within weeks, much of what appeared in those photographs would be gone.
Sandy Changed the Seaside Boardwalk Forever
Superstorm Sandy struck New Jersey on Oct. 29, 2012, devastating communities along the barrier island.
Funtown Pier was heavily damaged. Sections of the amusement pier collapsed, rides were destroyed and debris was scattered across the beach and surrounding area.
Neighboring Seaside Heights suffered some of Sandy’s most recognizable destruction. The image of Casino Pier’s Jet Star roller coaster sitting in the Atlantic Ocean became one of the defining photographs of the storm.
Just to the south, Funtown Pier had suffered its own catastrophic losses.
The Shore began rebuilding almost immediately.
Boardwalks were reconstructed. Businesses fought to reopen. By the summer of 2013, visitors were again walking along sections of the Seaside boardwalk that only months earlier had been buried beneath wreckage.
It appeared the worst was behind them.
It wasn’t.
Less Than a Year Later, the Boardwalk Burned
On Sept. 12, 2013, fire broke out beneath the boardwalk in Seaside Park.
Driven by strong winds, the flames raced north toward Seaside Heights, consuming businesses and destroying portions of the newly rebuilt boardwalk.
The fire also wiped out what remained of Funtown Pier.
Shore News Network was there again — this time not casually collecting stock photographs, but documenting the boardwalk burning as firefighters battled to stop the flames from advancing farther north.
The contrast with the photographs taken one year earlier could hardly have been greater.
In September 2012, the camera captured a quiet boardwalk on a rainy afternoon.
In September 2013, it captured firefighters, smoke, flames, emergency vehicles and residents watching another piece of the Shore disappear.
Pictures That Became More Important With Time
Looking back, the imperfections in those 2012 photographs are part of their value.
They weren’t intended as a farewell to Funtown Pier. Nobody was trying to document the final weeks of an era.
They were simply photographs of everyday life.
That is something disaster photography can never recreate.
Pictures taken after Sandy show destruction. Pictures from the 2013 fire show flames and devastation. Reconstruction photographs show how the Shore recovered.
These September 2012 images show what existed before anyone knew it needed to be remembered.
Today, the old Funtown Pier exists largely in photographs, home movies and the memories of generations who spent summer nights there. Plans to revive the Funtown Pier property have continued years after Sandy and the fire reshaped the southern end of the Seaside boardwalk.
For Shore News Network, the old photo archive now carries a meaning nobody anticipated when those pictures were taken.
Sometimes history announces itself.
Other times, it’s a rainy September afternoon, a camera and a few photographs taken quickly because you think you’ll always be able to come back and take better ones.
The photographs were taken only weeks before Superstorm Sandy.
They show ordinary life around Funtown Pier and the Seaside boardwalk in September 2012, before the storm transformed the barrier island.
Funtown Pier was devastated twice within about a year.
Sandy severely damaged the amusement pier in October 2012, followed by the September 2013 boardwalk fire that destroyed what remained.
The photos were never intended to document history.
They were taken as stock images for Shore News Network and JTOWN Magazine, making their everyday view of the old boardwalk especially meaningful today.
