A sacred spot at the Jersey Shore gets a new mission
See inside the century-old religious retreat that will be transformed into the Cape May Point Science Center
Somewhere around a million.
That’s what Bob Mullock estimates how many prayers were said at the St. Mary statue in the courtyard of the former St. Mary by-the-Sea Retreat House in Cape May Point.
The statue is surrounded on three sides by the iconic three-story red-roofed building that was used as a retreat by the Sisters of St. Joseph after its purchase in 1909.
Located just off the shore where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Delaware Bay the structure has survived numerous nor’easters and hurricanes while others up the coast haven’t been so lucky.
“The whole town is in a belief that St. Mary has protected the town of Cape May Point,” said Mullock, who also lives in Cape May Point.
Now, thanks to Mullock, those roles have been reversed.
When the sisters decided to divest themselves of the 133-year old building it was their desire to prevent further development and return the land to nature.
Local residents formed a nonprofit, spearheaded by Mullock, and convinced the sisters to sell it and be used as a scientific research center which mirrored their commitment to the ocean, climate and marine life.
In April the $5.5 million sale was finalized and the building was saved.
Last week, the Cape May Point Science Center welcomed a small group of people inside the former retreat where Mullock, Mike Lanzone and Sean Burcher, both of Cellular Tracking Technologies, talked about the future of the building while standing in the shadows of its past.
Moving forward it will be home to people and organizations that have the same goal — education, research and advocacy of the environment.
The grounds of the property is historically important because it was a landing spot for people escaping slave states, including Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, said Mullock, who helped found the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May.
The Cape May Lighthouse, which is only a quick walk away, was their guiding light. Once on land they would frequently knock on the lighthouse keeper’s cottage looking for fresh water and the next stop on the Underground Railroad.
In 1889 the Shoreham Hotel was built on the property, years before it became St. Mary by-the-Sea.
President Benjamin Harrison, senators and congressmen stayed at the hotel before it fell on hard times in the early 1900s and transitioned to a home for aged and infirm Black people with the help of abolitionist William Still.
The Philadelphia-based Sisters of St. Joseph, a community of Catholic women who through their ministries strive to unite God and neighbor, purchased the property in 1909 where it was used as a retreat house for the sisters and laity until more than a century later the pandemic forced them to shut its doors. For a few years during World War II, the U.S. Army took over the building from the sister and used it to house 600 soldiers.
Saving the building was important, Mullock said, not just because of its history but because it’s the first building people see as they come across the Delaware Bay.
“A million or so people take the ferry and that’s what they see,” he said.
Because of its size, shape and its location at the tip of New Jersey it’s also easily distinguishable from the air. From across the cove in Cape May City, the red roof of the building, just like the lighthouse, has been a constant sight for people on the beach.
Now, work continues on getting the building up and running for its next phase in history as the Cape May Point Science Center, although an exact timeline of when it might open is still undecided.
“They took excellent care of this building,” said Burcher, when talking about the sisters and the condition they left the building in.
Before getting started on renovations, the plan is to give curious people a chance to tour the 137-bedroom historic building in its state that’s still very close to what the sisters had it as.
“How many times all the people in Cape May Point walked by this beautiful building and never got the opportunity to come in,” said Lanzone.
The first floor was made up of three rooms, the community room, the chapel and the dining room.
Inside the community room, which will become the welcome center and possibly a museum, an old piano is located against a wall in an otherwise clean and open area. A few tables and other furniture are scattered along the original hardwood floors.
The back room is where the chapel was located and where the exhibit room will be. Numerous pews take up half the room and a few exhibits grace the walls. The plan is to have more than 40 exhibits for visitors that will include information about monarch butterflies, dolphins, whales, sharks, hawks, dragonflies and the golden eagle.
“So within 45 minutes to an hour, they are going to get the best education they ever got on the environment,” Mullock said.
Tracking wildlife will be part of the exhibits and that’s where Cellular Tracking Technologies, out of Rio Grande, comes in.
According to Lanzone, who is the CEO and on the science centers’ advisory board, Cape May Point is the first real location on the Eastern Seaboard where there is a migration bottleneck.
“Maybe the sisters knew that way back when they decided to put this here because it’s such an amazing spectacle of nature happening here,” he said.
Lanzone explained that the science center is in an ideal location for many different types of researchers to come together in a collaborative manner, which includes non-profits and universities, and work towards a common goal and mission.
The research could be anything from interns out collecting information about monarch butterflies, to tracking all kinds of birds, sharks and horseshoe crabs, then tying all the information together.
One of the already funded projects involves sensor stations where radio receivers detect radio tagged animals.
“A lot of these partner non-profits tag animals with these radio transmitters and you need a base station to pick them up,” said Burcher, who is also the director of scientific operations at the science center.
He explained that the purpose of the project is to fully cover the entire peninsula with sensor stations which will help them track the migratory patterns of birds. The information gathered will help protect the populations that pass through Cape May.
“We all love Cape May and all the shore towns here and part of that is because of nature, so how do we use the land and not impact the reasons we all love it?”
Another funded project, in collaboration with the Littoral Society, involves putting transmitters on horseshoe crabs to make it easier to assess the health of their population.
The science center will have a “mixing pot of talent” that will spawn even more research projects for the region, explained Lanzone.
Up from the new exhibit hall and across from the community room is the area where the sisters and soldiers once dined. It will now become a room for events and lectures. Dining room tables still take up a lot of the space while a long serving counter, in the front of the kitchen, is still in place.
The kitchen is mostly intact with an industrial stove and other essential equipment including the original large wooden cold storage units.
On the second floor, small bedrooms, some that still have furniture, come off the long hallways. Community bathrooms are scattered throughout.
“It was kind of a spartan type of life,” Mullock said.
One of the best views from the building comes from the deck that wraps around three sides and provides spectacular views of the courtyard and partial views of the ocean over the dune foliage. Through the window in each room the same views can be taken in.
A nice cool constant breeze swirls through the U-shaped area.
The third floor will be used as offices for volunteers and staff. An attic takes up a lot of the space that was used for storage. Wires, used as a clothesline, still hang off the rafters.
“It was so hot it was like a dryer,” said Mullock.
The property could be used as a rental site for future weddings, using the proceeds to support their cause — the protection of the environment. The money would go toward upkeep, projects and programs.
“We’re not looking to profit from any of these. We look at it as okay, how can we bring in money,” said Mullock.
He thinks they could hold approximately 10 weddings a year for couples looking for something a little more special.
While the timetable for everything to be completed and open is fluid, Lanzone said that by sometime next summer “people will be walking into a very impressive exhibit hall.”
For now, the thought is to have one day a week open for the public to see the building before renovations begin.
“So it may not be all about the scientific exhibits this summer, it might be partially about just seeing this amazing historic building,” said Lanzone.