CAPE MAY POINT – The Cape May Point Science Center still has a long way to go until it reaches its full potential, but over a year of hard work, negotiations with the previous owners, and collaborations with local institutions have given Bob Mullock, who spearheaded the center, confidence to open the center’s doors in June 2023.
Saint Mary by-the-Sea has been many things – a temporary barracks for soldiers in the height of World War II, a spiritual retreat house, a “Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People,” – but it has not had a public-facing role since it was the Shoreman Hotel over a hundred years ago. That changes with the Cape May Point Science Center.
Karly Nivison, an administrator at the center, told the Herald that the center will have a soft launch in the first week of June. In the meantime, Bob Mullock took the Herald on an early tour of the facility as it takes shape.
Those who took the tour shivered as they walked around the 38,000-square-foot building. The massive facility is not currently heated, and Mullock joked that he would have to “break in at night to turn the heat off” to keep the power bill under control once it is.
The building is filled with sections that are obvious “works in progress,” but the Catholic women, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Philadelphia, who once owned the place clearly kept it in shape. The bones are solid. Mullock plans to work with the existing architecture rather than radically rework what already functions.
The tour went through several open rooms larger in square footage than most homes in the nearby town of Villas. One such room is a massive dining room that served as a mess hall for American soldiers and as a gathering point for sisters on retreat.
The kitchen behind the mess hall hid many relics of the past: Three large, wooden, walk-in refrigerators, an industrial-sized mixer that will “probably be there forever because it weighs so much,” Nivison joked, and laminated mealtime instructions for long-gone cooks tasked with feeding hundreds.
The building’s second floor contains a hallway that feels similarly endless. This level is host to dozens of small dorm rooms that will soon be renovated for students who might spend a week at the center as part of an internship or summer camp program.
Many of these rooms will be workstations for visiting scientists, offices for Science Center administrators, and rentable accommodations that will bring in additional revenue to be reinvested into the center.
Both main floors have back decks that wrap around the entire building. As the tour followed Mullock outside, he pointed to a research antenna that collects climate data for Rutgers University. The university has a small workstation in one of the old dorm rooms. Mullock hopes that other researchers will similarly use the center as a ‘home base’ for data collection and research projects.
The entire tour was filled with “wows” and gasps of excitement while Mullock unraveled the mystery of the long closed-off building. He said that tours like this help drum up interest in the center, even if it still has a long way to go.
“Lots of people have always wanted to see this place,” he said.
The building holds so much intrigue in the public’s eye that tours, even at this early stage of development, are fascinating glimpses into the local history. Mullock spoke reverently of the building’s prior uses and told the group how he pled with the Catholic sisters not to sell or demolish the historical building.
Saint Mary by-the-Sea was a place of deep spirituality – it served as a spiritual retreat house for decades – and Mullock hopes that this will continue to be true as the building transforms into a hub of scientific research and discovery.
A statue of the Virgin Mary sits in the grassy courtyard around which the building wraps. She is visible from nearly every window, every room in the building. Mary’s presence, and the four crosses on the building’s roof, make the center’s religious background obvious to any passersby.
These icons will remain. Mullock said that he feels “dedicated to keep God in this building. You have to keep that. You can’t eliminate the holiness from this place.”
This sentiment carried through much of the tour. The main exhibit room was formerly a chapel, and most of the pews still sit heavy in the room. Mullock took the tour group into the former chapel, where he pointed to large informational displays on the wall.
These boards tell the story of Cape May County’s local wildlife, of icons like the monarch butterfly and bottlenose dolphins. Each of the displays is backed by a $10,000 donation to the center, $8,000 of which goes to the preservation of the animal in question. Mullock’s voice seemed burdened by the task of conservation as he gave the tour.
“God’s creation is just astonishing,” he said.
He said that eventually, each of the displays will be backed by an associated research project. Many of the animals depicted on the displays will have live monitoring feeds visible to guests.
Many of the plans that Mullock outlined are still a long way out, but he has experience in this field; he was largely responsible for the Harriet Tubman Museum and the Chalfonte Hotel in Cape May, each of which required extensive renovation of historical buildings.
Although the Science Center is still in early form, several research projects are already underway, including the study of migrating red-tailed hawks. Even though the center soft-launches in June, Nivison said it will not be fully operational, with all its bells and whistles, for two or three more years.
“There’s a whole lot of work to be done,” she said, “but Bob (Mullock) is confident that it can be done.”
Contact the author, Collin Hall, at chall@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 156.
