If you’ve walked the boardwalk in Asbury Park, you’ve seen Tillie: that huge, grinning, slightly unsettling face that shows up on t-shirts, coffee mugs, and the side of the Wonder Bar. But here’s the part almost nobody tells you until you go looking for it — the Tillie you can photograph today isn’t the original. The real one has been sitting in storage for more than twenty years, and as of late 2025, preservationists are still begging the state to finally put it back on public display.
This is a story about a piece of roadside art that somehow became a whole town’s unofficial mascot, and about a promise New Jersey made in 2004 that it still hasn’t kept.
What Is Tillie, and Where Did the Face Come From?
Tillie is the nickname for two nearly identical grinning murals that were painted on the exterior wall of Palace Amusements during the winter of 1955 and 1956, as a tribute to an earlier design. That earlier design was the famous funhouse face at Coney Island. The name Tillie is likely a nod to George C. Tilyou, owner of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, which featured the similar grinning Steeplechase Face.
According to a Rutgers archive record, Asbury Park’s Tillie was created by an artist credited as Neptune’s Worth Thomas for Palace Amusements, and it was intended to honor the original Tillie that first appeared at Steeplechase Park in the 1890s.
The Rise and Fall of Palace Amusements
Palace Amusements wasn’t some minor arcade. It was built in 1888 and closed in 1988, after which the historic building fell into disrepair. For decades, Tillie’s face loomed over generations of boardwalk visitors, and it earned a permanent spot in Jersey Shore mythology thanks to a certain local musician. Bruce Springsteen fans are especially fond of Tillie because Palace Amusements is mentioned in the hit song “Born to Run,” and the E Street Band posed in front of the winking Tillie for a promotional photo in the 1970s.
By the early 2000s, the building had become a real liability for redevelopment plans, and the wrecking ball was scheduled. That’s when things got complicated.
The Save Tillie Campaign and the 2004 Rescue
When the Palace site was slated for demolition, a grassroots preservation effort formed. Asbury Park residents, Tillie fans, and Springsteen fans formed a grassroots effort to save Tillie, lobbying the state to block the demolition or at least remove the mural beforehand. The group, called Save Tillie, actually started years earlier — founded in July of 1998, with its original goal of saving the Palace’s iconic Tillie image expanding in 1999 to an attempt to save the entire Palace.
The campaign only partially succeeded. The Tillie mural on the left side of the building was saved, along with other murals like the “bumper girl” designs, but the Tillie mural on the right side was destroyed. From June 8 to June 11, 2004, volunteers carefully removed the saved murals from the Palace building before it was torn down in July 2004.
Here’s the thing that made this rescue meaningful and not just sentimental: it came with paperwork. A 52-page permit dated March 2004 between the Department of Environmental Protection and the developers who purchased the lot included a provision requiring the artifacts to be preserved, restored, and displayed again, with the preserved sections incorporated into a new hotel or retail development as part of the lobby wall. That building, as you’ll see, still doesn’t exist.
Wait — Isn’t the Face on the Wonder Bar the Real One?
Nope, and this trips up a lot of visitors. The grinning face on the Wonder Bar, above the deck locals call “Tillie’s Landing,” is a brand-new mural, not the rescued original. It exists because of a scheduling accident. About a month after the Palace was demolished, Chevrolet showed up for a photo shoot for a print ad campaign celebrating the Corvette’s 50th anniversary, featuring the Goo Goo Dolls, expecting the Palace to still be standing — it wasn’t, so the owners of the Wonder Bar agreed to have their building repainted the same lime green as the old Palace, and a brand new Tillie mural was commissioned for the shoot.
So the face you’re taking a selfie with on Ocean Avenue is a 2004 stand-in, born out of a marketing deadline. It’s a fine piece of art in its own right, and it’s become genuinely beloved. But it’s not the artifact anyone fought to save.
Where Is the Real Tillie Now?
This is the part that’s genuinely frustrating if you care about local history. After being cut from the wall, the rescued mural didn’t go anywhere glamorous. After being saved from demolition, Tillie was put into a shed at the city’s wastewater treatment plant, where it stayed for a long time while people decided what to do with it. It has since moved to a storage facility, but conditions haven’t been much better. For 20 years, the murals and other artifacts sat in a storage facility that is not climate-controlled, continuing to deteriorate, out of view from the public, with no plans in place.
Recent inspections haven’t been encouraging either. Investigations have shown that the mural has lost significant paint, to the point of losing visual integrity. In other words, the clock is running out on how much of the original is even left to save.
Why New Jersey Is Still Fighting to Save Tillie
Because the redevelopment promised in that 2004 permit never happened. Twenty years on, the artifacts have never been brought back, and the developers have never announced a preservation and reuse plan. In 2024, the situation earned some unwanted attention. Preservation New Jersey included the Palace Amusement artifacts among their annual top ten most endangered historical sites in New Jersey that year.
As of December 2025, the pressure campaign is aimed squarely at the governor’s office. As Gov. Phil Murphy’s two terms come to a close, preservationists are urging his administration to save Tillie, whose visage was removed from Palace Amusements before its 2004 demolition and has spent two decades in storage while the promised redevelopment stalled — and fans worry it may already have deteriorated nearly beyond repair. Save Tillie’s founder has a straightforward read on what “preserve” was supposed to mean. “The word ‘preserve,’ it has a very particular meaning. It doesn’t mean just sticking in storage, walking away, and basically doing nothing else. It means treatment,” he told reporters. Some local historians are even floating a plan B: commissioning a full-sized faithful replica for permanent public display on the boardwalk or at Convention Hall while the fight over the original continues.
How to See Tillie in Asbury Park Today
If you’re planning a trip to the Jersey Shore, don’t expect to see the original — you can’t, not yet. What you can do is walk up to the Wonder Bar on Ocean Avenue and see the 2004 replica smiling down at “Tillie’s Landing,” grab a t-shirt or magnet with the design practically everywhere downtown, and maybe pop into the Silverball Museum, which has other rescued Palace Amusements artifacts, including a photo booth from the old building, on display.
It’s a strange little civic story, honestly: a smiling cartoon face from 1955 that survived a demolition, got promised a comeback, and then just sat in the dark for two decades while a whole state argued about who was supposed to bring it back into the light. If you love Asbury Park’s boardwalk revival, Tillie is a reminder that not every piece of that comeback story has a happy ending yet. Keep an eye on the news — this one might actually resolve soon.
NOTE TO THE ADVENTURER: This guide is meant to spark curiosity for what lies beyond the horizon — not to serve as a guarantee. Roads fall into disrepair, buildings are torn down and rebuilt, and properties change hands; 'tis your responsibility to do your own research before setting out. Always heed local and regional law, and always respect ground that isn't your own. Take every entry here as a suggestion, not a decree. This guide's contents were gathered with the aid of artificial intelligence, and like any scout, it will from time to time lead you astray. You assume all risk in following its counsel, and neither this blog nor its author is liable for any loss, injury, or misfortune that results.
