WILDWOOD – A historical marker has been placed in front of the building that once was the first Black-owned and -operated motel in Wildwood, thanks to the efforts of the original owners’ grandson with help from several community groups.
Ella and Frank Foster operated the Elfra Court Motel at 119 W. Roberts Ave. from 1950 to 1975, providing temporary quarters for many Black families and Black entertainers visiting Wildwood during the Jim Crow era.
Their grandson, Bruce Harris, of St. Petersburg, Florida, is writing a book about the motel and his grandparents, telling the story of its establishment and expansion over the years as it provided a place to stay for performers such as Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Ross, Sammy Davis Jr., Roy Hamilton, the Drifters and Fats Domino.
“I see my grandparents in a different light as a result of my research for this book,” Harris said. “To me, they had always been just my grandparents. My grandmother was a very loving and caring lady who was a little bossy at times, but very proud of all of her grandchildren. We all did really good in school and all have really good jobs.
“My grandfather had a gruff exterior, but he was a gentle and kind man. He had a very rough life, and grew up very poor on the eastern shore of Maryland. They both finished high school but did not go to college.
“They came to Wildwood from South Philadelphia with a clear vision of having a first-class motel, and there were no concessions. They wanted the motel to be the envy of everyone, and while it’s easy to say you want a first-class place, it’s hard to do. But they had an entrepreneurial spirit and got it done.”
During his research, Harris met with members of the Wildwood Historical Society, Preserving the Wildwoods and the City of Wildwood who were putting historical markers in many local shop windows. He asked about having one for the motel, and it’s now been placed on a pole in front of the site.
Harris said the building now is used to provide housing for international students working in the area.
“There were probably three reasons why my grandparents picked Wildwood,” the retired scientist said. “First, in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, Wildwood was probably the most advanced Shore community from an economical perspective. Second, the entertainment industry there was the biggest in the area, with nightclubs and music shows and acts.
“My grandparents lived in South Philadelphia, where many of the big-name entertainers came from. People like Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, Chubby Checker, all came from South Philadelphia. Third, the train went from Philadelphia to Wildwood, so it was easy to get there.”
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the United States from the post-Civil War era until around 1968. In New Jersey, Jim Crow segregation practices affected Black people’s access to public accommodations, including schools, movie theaters, restaurants, hotels/motels and swimming pools, well into the 1960s.
Harris said that as a young Black child growing up in Philadelphia, he remembers a swim club in his neighborhood that barred Blacks. When he would visit his grandparents in Wildwood, where he worked summers at their motel, Black people didn’t, and couldn’t, live east of New Jersey Avenue.
“The beaches were east, but there were unwritten rules that we learned as Black children that you could cross New Jersey Avenue to get to the beach, but you couldn’t stop, congregate or go into any of the white-owned businesses,” he recalled.
“I remember when working for my grandparents in the summer of 1975, we had Black families show up late at night looking for a room, because they had made a reservation at a white-owned motel and when they got there, they were told there was no reservation in their name.”
The Elfra Court Motel was named for his grandparents — the “El” from Ella and the “Fra” from Frank. It had 36 units, a pool, a house across the street where the family lived and a four-car garage. His grandmother handled the business side of the operation.
“In the 1950s, it was not common for hotel rooms to have their own bathrooms, but for rooms to share a bathroom. My grandfather wanted each room to have their own private bathroom,” Harris said. “He wanted a first-class motel.”
His grandmother got to know many Black entertainers while she worked at the Royal Theater in Philadelphia, where she was a ticket taker for 13 years. His grandfather had a variety of jobs, from picking peaches to short-order cook to building aircraft as a machinist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
“They cashed in on their jobs and moved to Wildwood,” Harris said, “and bought a four-unit apartment building. They rented three of the units and lived in the fourth. Eventually, my grandfather built the motel with his own hands, from the skills he had picked up from all his jobs. He also had help from others, but he basically built the motel from the ground up.
“A lot of things started to change after the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, including the Jim Crow practices, which began to abate,” leading his grandparents to sell the motel in 1976, he said. They moved to Woodbine and eventually became snowbirds, spending winters in St. Petersburg.
His grandfather died in 1995, and his grandmother in 2003.
Harris, who has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, worked in the pharmaceutical industry for many years and for the Food and Drug Administration for 11 years before retiring in February 2022. This is his first attempt at writing a book, which he hopes to have published next year.
Contact the reporter, Karen Knight, at kknight@cmcherald.com.
