Do you know where in Red Bank the above photo was taken?
Send your answer (or best guess) to [email protected] by noon, Thursday, April 24. We’ll reveal the location the next day.
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Here’s the answer to last week’s “Where.”
Last week’s photo was a close-up of a stucco sign reading “East Bridge” and a metal sign that says, “Clearance 13’0″ on a pedstrian bridge inside the Courts of Red Bank complex at 130 Maple Avenue. Several Wheresters incorrectly guessed it was the 10’1”, truck-munching overpass on West Front Street.
The Courts is the kind of place that, if you live near it, you get so accustomed to it being there that you tend to forget how unusual it is.
Flickr user Weiman Liu, who posted some photos of the complex back in 2008, called it “the strangest office complex I’ve ever seen.”
The lede in the Red Bank Register’s May 27, 1983 story about the ribbon cutting called it, “the area’s first medieval-styled professional offices.”
It is notable enough that when it was built in 1982, the NY Times New Jersey Section (yes, there was a whole section for New Jersey!) published a feature article about the then-under construction project headlined “In Red Bank, a Normandy Village.”
The story describes how developers Elaine and Theodore Sourlis envisioned a unique look and French village architectural design for their planned office condo project.
“We wanted something with charm,” Elaine Sourlis told the paper. “We didn’t want to put a box in the middle of the street.”
It’s an almost jarring quote to read in 2026, as developer after developer puts up said boxes all over town.
The story is also an interesting snapshot of the Sourlises in the middle of their buying spree that saw them purchasing and redeveloping dozens of properties across town and, in many ways, transforming the place.
It’s a legacy that included the rehabilitation of The Galleria, and one which the family contines today. Sourlis International Realty Corp has most recently applied to build 40 riverfront apartments across the street from the Galleria at 26-28 Shrewsbury Avenue.
Sourlis International Realty’s listed address is, of course, in what remains to this day, “the area’s only medieval-styled professional offices.”
Thanks to those who wrote in.
Chris Havens, Bill and Judy Fraser, John Robinson, Mary Lundin, Charles DeFilippo, Louis Rivera, Donaly Byck, Christine Jahnig, Taylor Fagliarone, Sue Noone, Frederick Hendrickson, Bill Thorne, Peter Cavalier, Chuck Stern, The Colmorgen Kids.
I hope I got everyone. Please email or text me immediately if we missed you at [email protected] or 848-331-8331. Your sharp eyes and hustle should be properly rewarded.
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