Lucy the Elephant is a six-story, 65-foot-tall building shaped like an elephant, standing on the beach in Margate City, New Jersey, since 1881. You can walk inside her — up a spiral staircase through her legs and belly, out onto an observation deck on her back — making her the oldest surviving roadside attraction in the country and a National Historic Landmark.
If you’ve driven the Jersey Shore and caught a glimpse of a giant tin elephant looming over the dunes, that’s not a mirage. That’s Lucy, and she has been standing watch over Absecon Island longer than the Atlantic City boardwalk has existed in its current form. She’s strange, she’s wonderful, and she has a backstory involving real estate hustlers, a tavern fire, and a demolition crew that got stopped just in time.
What Exactly Is Lucy the Elephant?
Lucy is a wood-frame, tin-clad building constructed to look like an elephant, standing along the beach in what’s now Josephine Harron Park in Margate. She is located along the beach in Josephine Harron Park in Margate, New Jersey, and is six stories high, listed on the National Park Registry of Historical Landmarks. Lucy is 6 stories tall, weighs 90 tons, and is covered with 12,000 square feet of sheet tin.
She wasn’t built as art or whimsy for its own sake. Lucy was built in 1881 as a spectacle to attract prospective real estate buyers to Margate, then known as South Atlantic City, and visitors arrived by the newly constructed railroad, which stopped right beside her. Basically, Lucy was a 19th-century billboard you could climb into.
Who Built Lucy, and Why an Elephant?
Lucy was built in 1881 by James Vincent de Paul Lafferty Jr., intended to attract buyers to the building lots he was offering for sale in the area, reportedly costing $25,000 to construct. That was a serious sum of money for a marketing gimmick, but Lafferty thought big. On December 5, 1882, he received a patent giving him the exclusive right to build and sell “animal-shaped buildings” for 17 years.
He didn’t stop at one elephant. Lafferty was so confident in his design that he patented “animal-shaped buildings” and built three elephants in total, though Lucy is the sole survivor — the “Elephantine Colossus” on Coney Island was destroyed by fire in 1896, and “Light of Asia” in Cape May was demolished in 1900. Everywhere else, the elephants disappeared. Only Margate’s held on.
How Lucy Went From Tavern to Near-Demolition
Lafferty eventually ran into money trouble and sold Lucy. After falling into financial trouble, Lafferty sold the Elephant and other property to Anton Gertzen in 1887. Under the Gertzen family, Lucy lived a lot of different lives. Standing six stories tall, weighing 90 tons, Lucy was more than an object of awe — she was a functioning building, serving first as a real estate office, then as a hotel, a summer home, even briefly as a tavern, until unruly drunks nearly burned her down.
She took her share of hits from Mother Nature too. Lucy was heavily damaged in the storm of 1903 and was standing knee deep in the sand. Decades later, she came through something even worse. In 1944 a hurricane devastated the Jersey coast, and Lucy took a beating but somehow survived, while other nearby properties including the entire Margate Boardwalk were destroyed.
By the late 1960s, though, neglect had done what storms couldn’t. Lucy continued in use as a spectacle and tourist attraction well into the twentieth century, but the harsh marine environment and deferred maintenance eventually took a toll, and by 1969 the structure was nearly derelict, the land had been sold to developers, and the elephant was slated for demolition.
That’s when ordinary Margate residents stepped in. The Save Lucy Committee came to the rescue, and within weeks this small concerned group of ordinary citizens had raised enough money to move the entire decaying structure two blocks away to a new site owned by the city. Restoring her wasn’t quick or cheap. Thirty years and over 1.5 million dollars later, Lucy was completely restored to her original splendor, inside and out.
Her comeback earned her official recognition. She was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 12, 1971, and designated a National Historic Landmark on May 11, 1976.
Can You Actually Go Inside Lucy the Elephant?
Yes — and that’s the whole point of visiting. Visitors enter through her leg, climb a spiral staircase through her interior, and emerge onto the howdah — the observation platform on her back — for stunning 360-degree views of the Atlantic Ocean and the Jersey Shore coastline. Along the way, guides point out photos and artifacts from her long history, so it’s part climb, part mini-museum.
Lucy has hosted more than just curious tourists over the years, too. For most of her existence, Lucy has been a tourist attraction hosting famous guests from around the world that include former President Woodrow Wilson, industrialist Henry Ford, and the du Pont family of Delaware.
Hours, Tours, and Tickets
According to Lucy’s own FAQ page, any visitors wishing to go inside Lucy the Elephant must purchase admission tickets, currently $9.00 for adults ages 19 and up, $8.50 for teens ages 13-18, and $5.00 for children ages 3-12. Younger kids typically get in free, and US military members with a valid ID are also free. Walking the grounds and browsing the gift shop, on the other hand, costs nothing.
Hours shift with the seasons, so it’s worth double-checking before you drive down. Lucy is typically open Wednesday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and weekends from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., though hours can vary by season, and during summer she’s also open Mondays and Tuesdays. Guided tours run at regular intervals throughout the day, and the last tour departs 45 minutes before closing time.
Is Lucy the Elephant Still a Big Deal?
More than ever, actually. Attendance keeps climbing rather than fading with age. In 2023, Lucy booked a new record high of 42,267 tours, surpassing the previous record set in 2018. And the recognition keeps coming, too — in May 2025, Lucy was voted the No. 1 Best Roadside Attraction in the country in USA Today’s 2025 readers’ choice awards.
Margate isn’t resting on that reputation, either. On January 5, 2023, the City of Margate approved a plan to create a visitor center on Lucy’s existing site, a proposed 2-story building designed to include a retail area, information and displays, meeting spaces, and restrooms. There’s also ongoing restoration work funded through federal grants, so the goal is clearly to keep Lucy standing for another 140-plus years, not just preserve her as a museum piece.
Why Bother Visiting an Elephant-Shaped Building?
Honestly, because there’s nothing else quite like it. Lucy isn’t a replica or a theme-park prop — she’s a genuine 19th-century building that happens to be shaped like an animal, and she’s the last of her kind anywhere in the world. You climb actual wooden stairs that actual hotel guests and summer tenants once used. You stand where a doctor’s family once kept a bathtub tucked into an elephant’s shoulder. That’s not something you get at most museums.
If you’re already at the Jersey Shore, Margate is a short hop from Atlantic City, and a stop at Lucy takes about an hour out of your day — a quick, strange, genuinely fun detour before you head back to the beach. Bring your camera, wear shoes you can climb stairs in, and go in with zero expectations of subtlety. Lucy doesn’t do subtle. She never has.
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.
