New Jersey’s 90-ton elephant has stood on the beach since 1881 — and you can climb inside her

She’s America’s oldest roadside attraction

Five miles south of Atlantic City, a six-story elephant stands on the beach in Margate City, New Jersey. Her name is Lucy, she weighs 90 tons, and she has been here since 1881.

USA Today readers voted her the No. 1 Best Roadside Attraction in the country in both 2024 and 2025. She earned a National Historic Landmark designation in 1976.

You can climb a spiral staircase through her body and look out from the platform on her back, and the story of how she got here starts with a land deal.

A real estate scheme that outlived its inventor

A developer named James V. Lafferty started building Lucy in 1881 in what was then South Atlantic City. He wanted something big enough to pull potential buyers to his beachfront lots.

He hired Philadelphia architects William Free and J. Mason Kirby to design it, and they modeled the structure after Jumbo, the famous Barnum and Bailey circus elephant. Construction ran between $25,000 and $38,000.

Lafferty even patented animal-shaped buildings on Dec. 5, 1882, locking up exclusive rights for 17 years.

Nearly one million pieces of wood hold her together

Lucy stands 65 feet high, stretches 60 feet long, and measures 18 feet wide.

Builders used nearly one million pieces of wood, 200 kegs of nails, and 4 tons of bolts and iron bars to hold her together.

Her skin was originally 12,000 square feet of sheet tin, now replaced with modern metal cladding.

She has 22 windows scattered across her body, and two of them are round and sit right where you would expect her eyes to be.

Walk up a spiral staircase inside her hind leg

You enter Lucy through one of her hind legs, where a spiral staircase takes you up through her body. Inside, a small museum shows old photographs and a short film about her past.

The tour keeps going up to the howdah, the observation platform sitting on her back. From there, you get a wide-open look at the Atlantic Ocean, the beach, and the Atlantic City skyline.

Guided tours run every 45 minutes during business hours.

From real estate office to tavern to cottage

Lafferty used Lucy as a real estate office first, bringing buyers up to the howdah to show them available land from above.

He sold the structure to Anton Gertzen of Philadelphia in 1887, and Gertzen’s daughter-in-law Sophia gave the elephant her name around 1902.

Over the decades, Lucy also served as a restaurant, a business office, a summer cottage, and a tavern. Prohibition shut the tavern down.

Old postcards call her “The Elephant Hotel,” but Lucy herself never housed a single overnight guest.

The hotel was actually next door

One of the biggest myths about Lucy is that she once operated as a hotel.

Souvenir postcards from the early 1900s labeled her “The Elephant Hotel of Atlantic City,” but the truth is simpler.

The Gertzen family purchased a Turkish Pavilion from the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition and rebuilt it behind Lucy. That separate building held the hotel, rooming house, and beer garden.

People came from around the world to stay next door and then walk over to climb Lucy’s stairs.

Two sister elephants didn’t survive

Lafferty built two other elephant-shaped buildings with his patent.

The Elephantine Colossus on Coney Island in Brooklyn stood 122 feet tall with seven floors of hotel rooms, and it burned down in 1896.

The Light of Asia in Cape May, New Jersey, was smaller, and workers demolished it in 1900. Lucy is the only one left.

That makes her the sole remaining example of 19th-century zoomorphic architecture in the country.

Volunteers had 30 days to save her

By the 1960s, Lucy had fallen apart and the city had scheduled her for demolition. In 1969, a group of Margate citizens led by Edwin T. Carpenter formed the Save Lucy Committee.

The city gave them 30 days to move her or pay for tearing her down. Volunteers knocked on doors across town to raise the money.

On July 20, 1970, all 90 tons of Lucy rolled about 100 yards down Atlantic Avenue on a trailer. The move took about seven hours.

Four years of work brought her back

After the move, Lucy stayed closed for four years while crews reinforced her original wooden frame with new steel and replaced the howdah.

Workers set a plug of green glass into the howdah platform, and it refracts light down into Lucy’s interior. She reopened for tours in 1974.

In 1971, she joined the New Jersey Register of Historic Places and the National Register. Five years later, during the nation’s Bicentennial, she earned her National Historic Landmark designation.

A $2.4 million makeover for her 140s

By 2021, inspectors found that more than half of Lucy’s metal skin had degraded beyond repair. A 15-month restoration kicked off in Sept. 2021.

Workers repaired sections of the cedar frame and installed all new metal cladding.

The final bill hit $2.4 million, nearly double the original $1.3 million estimate after inflation and supply chain problems drove costs up. Lucy reopened on Dec. 28, 2022, with a new exterior.

The next year, she set a tour record with 42,267 guided tours.

A new welcome center is going up on site

A Visitor Welcome and Interpretive Center is replacing the old gift shop on site.

The new building will have a larger retail space, ADA-compliant restrooms, interactive exhibits, and virtual access for anyone who cannot climb Lucy’s stairs.

The gift shop has moved across the street to 9219 Atlantic Avenue for now.

Interior work, including a new HVAC system, refinished floors, an upgraded fire suppression system, and plaster wall repairs, is planned for early 2027.

Lucy now draws more than 150,000 visitors a year, up from about 3,000 when the old gift shop opened in the 1980s.

Her birthday party falls on the Saturday closest to July 20

Lucy sits right on the beach in Josephine Harron Park, named after a co-founder of the Save Lucy Committee. The park is fenced with picnic tables, so it works well for families.

You can walk the grounds and browse the gift shop for free. Only the guided tour inside Lucy requires a ticket.

Summer hours generally run Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with shorter hours off-season.

Each year, Lucy’s birthday celebration falls on the Saturday closest to July 20, the anniversary of her 1970 move, with food, rides, and games.

Visit Lucy the Elephant in Margate City, N.J.

You can find Lucy at 9200 Atlantic Ave. at the corner of Atlantic and Decatur avenues in Margate City, right on the beach. She sits about five miles south of Atlantic City and roughly 60 miles southeast of Philadelphia.

Guided tours take you through the interior and up to the howdah for ocean and skyline views. Lucy is open year-round with seasonal hours, so check the official website before you go.

Free parking is available on-site.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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