Lucy the Elephant
In 1882, a Philadelphia real estate developer named James V. Lafferty patented the right to build animal-shaped buildings. Then he built a six-story elephant on the beach in South Atlantic City and used it to sell land. The idea sounds absurd. It worked. Lucy the Elephant, as the structure came to be known, still stands in Margate City, New Jersey, sixty-five feet tall, weighing ninety tons, clad in twelve thousand square feet of tin, staring eastward across the Atlantic Ocean with twenty-two windows for eyes and a howdah on her back that once served as a real estate viewing platform. She is the oldest surviving roadside tourist attraction in America, a National Historic Landmark, and proof that the best way to sell beachfront property is to build something so strange that nobody can look away.
The Elephant Patent
On December 5, 1882, the U.S. Patent Office granted Lafferty Patent #268503, giving him the exclusive right to make, use, or sell animal-shaped buildings for seventeen years. He hired Philadelphia architects William Free and J. Mason Kirby to design a structure modeled after Jumbo, the famous elephant of Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth. The construction cost between $25,000 and $38,000, roughly the price of a modest mansion in that era. Initially called the Elephant Bazaar, the structure stands sixty-five feet high, sixty feet long, and eighteen feet wide. Nearly one million pieces of wood form the frame. Two hundred kegs of nails, four tons of bolts and iron bars, and twelve thousand square feet of tin hold it all together. Lafferty was not content with one elephant. He built a larger version on Coney Island in Brooklyn, the Elephantine Colossus, and licensed his patent for another in Cape May, New Jersey. Only Lucy survived.
From Bazaar to Landmark
Lafferty's original sales pitch was straightforward: climb inside the elephant, ride up to the howdah on her back, and survey the parcels of land available for purchase. The views from the carriage encompass Margate, Atlantic City's skyline, the beach, and the open ocean. It was real estate marketing as carnival attraction, and it pulled crowds. But Lafferty eventually lost the property, and Lucy passed through a series of owners and identities. She served as a tavern, a summer cottage, and simply as a curiosity. Salt air gnawed at her tin skin. Weather battered her wooden bones. By the mid-twentieth century, she was deteriorating badly, and demolition seemed inevitable. The Save Lucy Committee formed to rescue her. In 1976, she was moved to a new location in Margate, restored, and opened to the public as a museum. The National Historic Landmark designation followed, cementing her status as something far more significant than a roadside oddity.
A New Skin
Lucy's most recent trial came from the Atlantic itself. A 2021 inspection revealed that more than half of her metal exterior had degraded beyond repair, the cumulative toll of over a century of salt spray, hurricanes, and coastal weather. The Save Lucy Committee secured a $500,000 grant from the National Park Service and additional funding from the Preserve New Jersey Preservation Fund to replace the metal skin. Lucy closed on September 20, 2021. The restoration proved more extensive and expensive than anticipated. The final cost reached $2.4 million, nearly double initial projections. Lucy reopened on December 28, 2022, gleaming in fresh tin. In 2023, she set a new record with 42,267 guided tours, surpassing the previous high set in 2018. In 2025, USA Today's readers voted her the number one best roadside attraction in the country.
Hollywood's Favorite Elephant
Lucy has been quietly appearing in American popular culture for decades. Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern filmed scenes around her in The King of Marvin Gardens in 1972. She shows up in the opening of the 1980 film Atlantic City, starring Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon. A postcard featuring Lucy appears in the opening credits of National Lampoon's Vacation in 1983. The Disney film The Rocketeer placed a Lucy-inspired ice cream shop in 1940s Southern California. The Elephantine Colossus, Lucy's larger Coney Island sibling, inspired the elephant boudoir in Moulin Rouge. HBO's Boardwalk Empire referenced her. The History Channel, the Travel Channel, and PBS have all dedicated segments to her story. She even appeared as an Airbnb listing in 2020, letting guests sleep inside a six-story elephant on the Jersey Shore.
Still Standing
Lucy is currently listed as the twelfth tallest statue in the United States, a ranking that says less about her modest sixty-five feet than about the peculiar American impulse to build things large, strange, and impossible to ignore. She was never meant to last this long. Lafferty built her as a marketing gimmick in 1882, and the two other animal buildings he created are long gone. Yet here she stands, 140 years on, freshly skinned in new tin, drawing record crowds, voted the best roadside attraction in the nation. The City of Margate approved plans in 2023 for a proper visitor center on her site. Lucy remains what she has always been: a building shaped like an elephant, standing on a beach, daring you to explain why that is not the most wonderful thing in the world.
From the Air
Located at 39.321N, 74.512W in Margate City, New Jersey, roughly 3nm southwest of the Atlantic City Boardwalk along the beachfront. Lucy is a six-story elephant-shaped structure visible from low altitude near the shoreline. Look for her distinctive silhouette on the beach side of the road in the Margate residential area. The nearest airport is Atlantic City International (KACY), approximately 10nm to the northwest. The former Bader Field (KAIY) is about 4nm to the northeast. Fly at 500-1,000 feet AGL along the coastline heading southwest from Atlantic City for the best approach. The structure sits among low-rise residential buildings, making it surprisingly easy to spot.