October 05, 2023| Community
By: Marty Kane
One hundred years ago this month, brothers Clarence J. Lee and Thomas E. Lee of Mount Arlington began constructing a pavilion building on Lake Hopatcong’s shoreline. This pavilion was to be the centerpiece of the public beach they had opened. The pavilion was largely a refreshment stand but also served as offices to manage the beach, bathhouses, boat rentals, and tour boats operating from the site. This building was a familiar mainstay along Howard Boulevard in Mount Arlington for decades. In 1994, Bob Lee, a descendant of the original founders, looked to retire but did not want to sell the beach property and see it subdivided into a lakefront development. Instead, the Lee family donated the land to Morris County as a public park. In the ensuing years, while the county operated the site as a county marina, the pavilion building became vacant and largely forgotten.
While the Lee’s Park pavilion deteriorated from the 1990s to 2010s, local residents and the historical community became increasingly concerned about losing this building. The pavilion is considered a unique structure to Lake Hopatcong and the surrounding area. Similar pavilions, popular prior to World War II, have almost entirely disappeared. The Lake Hopatcong Foundation helped fund a feasibility study for the pavilion in 2014 which concluded that the building was viable and could find a new life with several possible food-related uses. HMR Architects, who performed a feasibility study of the pavilion in 2014, noted that the pavilion “is a unique example of surviving ‘lake-style’ recreational architecture in New Jersey. It retains much of its character and is significant as an early twentieth-century lake recreation kiosk.”
It has taken another decade for the project to advance but at the Morris County Park Commission’s September 18, 2023 public meeting, a contract was awarded for the rehabilitation of the pavilion. The rehabilitation will include an indoor space rentable for weddings, family reunions, birthday parties, and other private events. The next step will be the signing of the contract, which Morris County Park Commission Executive Director Dave Helmer indicates will be completed this month. The contract calls for a 365-day construction period. If that schedule is met, we should witness a beautiful pavilion one hundred years after it first opened.
UPDATE: The community was shocked when the pavilion was demolished in November of 2023. It was determined by Morris County Parks that the most cost-effective direction forward, given how much of the building would have to be rebuilt in order to reach code, was a complete demolition and rebuild. Morris County Park Commission's drawings for the rehabilitation/rebuild can be viewed HERE.
