Legend has it the words “You leaving?” were first uttered in Red Bank a short time before this photo was taken amid the 1920’s parking crush.
By BRIAN DONOHUE
There’s no parade scheduled. There won’t be any special proclamation from the mayor (as far as we know) or exhibit at our wonderful Red Bank Public Library.
But quietly this month and mostly without notice, Red Bank appears to have marked the 100th anniversary of its townfolk’s most enduring pastime: debating parking issues. 
The pages of the Red Bank Register newspaper archives from the summer of 1926 recount a swirling debate over an effort to institute an hour-and-a-half parking limit in downtown Red Bank – possibly the town’s first ever effort to regulate parking.
Week after week, in between headlines declaring East Keansburg “overrun by city hoodlums” and weekly accounts of grisly car crash deaths, are weekly dispatches recounting the ongoing debate over parking that read a bit like local Facebook pages in 2026.
The problem, according to a vociferous chorus of downtown business owners lobbying the Borough Council, was the lack of parking for their customers.
“The lack of parking space has steadily become worse and it was stated at the meeting that the merchants were losing trade, especially on Saturday nights, because folks found it nearly impossible to get a parking space for their cars,” reads a July 7, 1926 story about a meeting of the Red Bank Businessmen’s Association.
One of the problems was employees of the businesses themselves hogging parking spaces for their entire workday (Red Bank Catholic students were mostly not driving to school yet, apparently.)
The association approached the borough with a proposal to impose timed parking limits on Broad Street, Monmouth Street, West Front Street, East Front Street, Mechanic Street and White Street.
The ordinance was drawn up by the borough attorney, and by late July, the governing body was set to vote – but the businessmen got cold feet.
The ordinance was pulled after members of the business group had a change of heart, possibly persuaded by a Red Bank Register editorial decrying the idea.
Instead of imposing time limits for on-street parking, the search would begin for land on which motorists could exercise the natural-born right to free automobile storage which many still flex today.
The paper reports several different avenues that would be explored to create parking lots at the North Shrewsbury Ice Boat & Yacht Club and the Monmouth Boat Club.
There was also mention of a plan to have the borough buy property on Mechanic Street and knock down an existing barn to build a parking lot or create a parking lot on the site of the Lyceum theater, where Marine Park where parking lots were eventually built. And there’s the first mention of tearing down homes on White Street to create parking.
redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331 or yelling his name loudly as he walks by. Do you value the news coverage provided by redbankgreen? Please become a financial supporter if you haven’t already. Click here to set your own level of monthly or annual contribution.
