The Jersey Shore has long been an attraction for pleasure-seekers. In the late 1800s, it played host to real estate speculators eager to develop the sandy wilds of New Jersey’s Atlantic coast. Its largest settlement, Atlantic City, later became the Boardwalk Empire of gambling, glamour and vice. More recently, it somewhat controversially served as the setting for an eponymous reality television series.

One of the Shore’s most beloved residents, a 65-foot-tall elephant, has been there through it all.

Called Lucy, the monument has proudly gazed upon the Jersey Shore since 1881. Built as a means to sell coastal real estate, Lucy instead became a roadside attraction before the age of automobiles. In her long life, she has served as a home, a tavern and a tourist attraction before she was nearly killed – or, one might say, demolished – in the 1960s.

A National Historic Landmark, she celebrated her 136th birthday this weekend. Today, Lucy is the oldest existent roadside attraction in America and draws around 130,000 visitors each year.

Richard Helfant remembers his mother taking him through Lucy as a child. Later, as a ‘mischievous’ teenager he would break into her with friends to eat hot dogs they had purchased from Lenny’s a nearby stand. Now Helfant, 60, runs the executive team responsible for maintaining Lucy for her visitors.

‘It’s more than a job. It’s a labor of love,’ he said. ‘We do it because of our passion and commitment to what we are doing.’

Lucy the Elephant is a 136-year-old roadside attraction in Margate, New Jersey. James Lafferty conceived of her as a means to attract potential real estate buyers to the sandy, undeveloped wilds of Southern New Jersey in the 1880s

Lucy is pictured in 1895, at the age of 14. Lafferty would bring buyers to her howdah, the carriage on top of her back, from which they would gaze across the surrounding landscape rife for development

Today, Lucy is a museum and attracts 130,000 annual visitors. Pictured are her pink innards

Lucy is pictured in Margate, about five miles from Atlantic City. She has survived life-threantening foes including hurricanes and developers

Lucy was conceived by James Vincent de Paul Lafferty Jr, an Irish-American engineer and inventor from Philadelphia.

Lafferty thought a giant elephant structure might help boost real estate purchases and tourism in the sandy wilds of what was then called South Atlantic City, five miles down the beach from the burgeoning pleasure capital of Atlantic City. His scheme was to use Lucy as his real estate office. Prospective buyers were to climb 130 steps to her howdah, an ornate carriage placed atop an elephant’s back, and look out at the vast expanse of coastal land ripe for the taking. Then, back in her belly, Lafferty would try to strike a deal.

In patent 268,503, his 17-year patent on animal-shaped buildings granted in 1882, Lafferty wrote that he ‘invented a new and useful improvement in buildings’.

‘My invention consists of a building in the form of an animal, the body of which is floored and divided into rooms, closets…and the legs contain the stairs which lead to the body, said legs being hollow, so as to be of increased strength for properly supporting the body, and the elevation of the body permitting the circulation of air below the same, the entire device presenting a unique appearance and producing a building which is well ventilated and lighted,’ he noted. ‘The building may be of the form of any other animal than an elephant, as that of a fish, fowl, etc.’

A postcard from 1910 advertises that Lucy is 'The only elephant in the world you can go through and come out alive.' Pictured behind her is the Elephant Hotel, housed in the Turkish Pavilion from the 1876 Centennial International Exhibition held in Philadelphia

Lafferty received a 17-year patent for animal-shaped buildings in 1882 (pictured). In the patent, he included his planned design for the innards of an elephantine structure

Lucy is pictured in 1907 in a less idealized representation than the above postcard. Originally called the 'Elephant Bazaar,' a later owner named Sophia Gertzen coined the name 'Lucy' for unknown reasons

Lafferty commissioned architect William Free to design the elephantine structure and found a contractor to build it in 1881 for between $25,000 and $38,000 (between $550,000 and $850,000 in 2017).

Upon completion, Lucy – then called the ‘Elephant Bazaar’ – measured 65 feet tall and 60 feet by 18 feet. She was made of one million pounds of wood, 12,000 square feet of tin and she weighed 90 tons. Lucy had 22 windows and her largest room was 324 square feet.

While she made for an impressive sight, the pachyderm failed to generate much interest in real estate. Lafferty’s rampant land speculation caught up with him, and in 1887 he sold off many of his assets, including the Elephant Bazaar.

Her new parents were Anton Gertzen, a German immigrant, and his wife Caroline, a Dutch immigrant. Gertzen also purchased the Turkish Pavilion from Philadelphia’s Centennial Celebration to put next to the elephant.

Their third son, John, purchased the Elephant Bazaar from his parents. John and his wife, Sophia, turned Lucy into a tourist stop and charged 10 cents (about $2.25 today) to tour her. At some point, Sophia supposedly coined the name ‘Lucy’.

Lucy the Elephant served as a home in 1902 for an English doctor and his family. Her website notes: ‘A bathroom was outfitted in one of the small front shoulder closets using a miniature bathtub.’ Later, she briefly served as a tavern. The nearby Elephant Hotel provided rooms for her visitors, who included Woodrow Wilson and Henry Ford.

Lucy survived a fire started by drunken tavern-goers and multiple severe storms that threatened to drown her. She survived the Turkish Pavilion, which was destroyed in the 1944 Great Atlantic hurricane. She survived John, who died in 1916, and Sophia, who died in 1963.

But in 1962, Lucy shut down for tours and by 1969, she stood decaying and vulnerable to her greatest foe – a land developer eager to turn her seaside lot into a condominium building. The Gertzen descendants were preparing to sell the land on which Lucy stood.

Lucy was closed in 1962 and stood rather derelict in the late 1960s (pictured). A local organization, first the Margate Civic Association and later the Save Lucy Committee, worked to save her

Lucy was moved two blocks from her original home in July 1970 to make way for a new condominium development. She is pictured being pulled by a yellow pickup truck down the road, as curious spectators look on

A group of citizens including Edwin and Sylvia Carpenter formed the Margate Civic Association and purchased Lucy from the Gertzens, who were happy to sell her for a ceremonial price of $1 (about $7 today). The Association then negotiated with the city of Margate to secure a vacant beachfront lot two blocks away. The fight to preserve her necessitated the Save Lucy Committee, which used grassroots means to raise the roughly $25,000 (about $160,000 today) needed to relocate her.

On the morning of July 20, 1970, a yellow pickup truck pulled Lucy to her new home amid thousands of curious spectators. Seven hours later, she was parked in her new lot.

‘For a lady ninety years old, it is marvelous that she could stand such a rigorous ordeal,’ noted Mayor Martin Bloom, according to Lucy’s website.

After Lucy was moved, the next step was to bring her back to life. Much of this work fell to the Carpenters and their neighbor and friend, Josephine Harron.

They, along with the rest of the Save Lucy Committee, worked to reopen her. Lucy was once again open for tours beginning in 1974, and she became a National Historic Landmark in 1976. Much of this work was due to Harron, who tirelessly campaigned for grants to maintain and improve Lucy.

Lucy has 22 windows and her largest room is 324 square feet. She cost, in today's money, between $550,000 and $850,000

An electric streetcar passes through Margate as Lucy is pictured at left gazing out into the ocean. The Atlantic City area used to boast three different streetcar lines. The last ceased operations in 1955

Richard Helfant, who runs the executive team responsible for maintaining Lucy, said: 'It’s more than a job. It’s a labor of love'

‘Jo was an extraordinary woman,’ said Helfant, who succeeded Harron as the chief executive responsible for maintaining Lucy in 2000. ‘She just seemed to be very plain and innocent in a kind way, but Jo was ferocious, and Jo was determined, and nothing could stop Jo from achieving her goals.’

He added: ‘She is the reason that Lucy exists today.’

Today, Lucy welcomes 130,000 people a year. Annual costs to maintain her run around $500,000, about the same as the $500,000 in revenue she generates from tours (now $8 for adults and $4 for children) and her gift shop.

On her 135th birthday last year, she (or, more accurately, her proxies) announced her candidacy for the United States presidency.

In a mock vote held at her birthday party, she easily won the election.

A CONEY ISLAND COLOSSUS AND THE LIGHT OF ASIA: THE DECEASED ELEPHANTS OF THE EAST COAST James Lafferty also designed the Elephantine Colossus, a gargantuan 12-story elephant that towered nearly 200 feet over Coney Island, New York. It was built in 1884 and was dubbed the eighth wonder of the world by its manager, C.A. Bradenburgh. Its stomach housed a 2100-square-foot space and the elephant’s innards housed everything from a cigar lounge to a concert hall to an observatory –aptly, the eyes served as telescopes – from which patrons could pay for panoramic vistas of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Atlantic Ocean. An 1885 New York Times account notes that Bradenburgh claimed that one could see as far as Rio de Janeiro and Paris from the colossal structure. Later, a rollercoaster was built around the colossus. The Elephantine Colossus was more than twice the size of Lucy and towered over Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York for 12 years. It was built in 1884 and burned down in 1896 Pictured is the design for the Coney Island Elephantine Colossus But soon enough, the elephant lost its cool and became a pick-up spot for prostitutes. The euphemism ‘seeing the elephant’ became a rather scandalous turn of phrase. In 1896, the Colossus burned down in a spectacular fire that could be seen from the shores of New Jersey. Theodore Reger purchased the rights to build a 58-foot-tall elephant statue in Cape May, on the southern tip of the Jersey Shore. Similarly to the elephant’s Jersey Shore neighbor, the so-called ‘Light of Asia’ was built to help sell real estate in 1884. People could also pay to climb to a viewing platform in the howdah. But much like Lafferty’s scheme farther up the shore, the Light of Asia failed to generate interest in real estate. The elephant only lived until the age of 16. It was torn down in 1900. Advertisement