Brigantine Castle was located on the beach at 14th Street North and Brigantine Avenue in Brigantine, New Jersey. The pier the castle was located on was originally a dime beer place known as Seahorse Pier. In the mid-1970s, entrepreneur Carmen J. Ricci presented plans to the city to renovate the pier and construct Brigantine Castle. Ricci won city approval for the project by presenting a scale model and artist renderings of the future attraction.

Construction began on January 1st, 1976, and was completed in 150 days in order to make its planned Memorial Day Weekend opening that same year. During its early years, Brigantine Castle drew more than a million tourists annually from all along the East Coast. Ricci’s extensive advertising campaign helped with this early success, and included regional TV commercials, brochures and print ads in newspapers & magazines.

While early business was great for Brigantine Castle, the amusement’s facilities were not adequate to handle the busloads of visitors to the pier. Visitors were urinating in homeowners’ lawns, and traffic & parking became a problem. This lead to a lawsuit in the late 1970’s against the attraction’s owners. While Ricci won the lawsuit, the city of Brigantine did adopt new ordinances limiting charter bus traffic and advertising, leading to a drop in business.

An August 1982 storm caused $500,000 dollars worth of damage to the castle pier, for which a government flood insurance policy refused to pay for. This, along with more restrictive state regulations stemming from a deadly 1984 fire at a local Six Flags Great Adventure Haunted House, lead to Ricci deciding to permanently close Brigantine Castle in 1984.

He finally sold the pier in April of 1987 for approximately $1 million. The new owner planed on demolishing the castle and building a recreational facility. However, the week that demolition was to take place, Brigantine Castle and its pier burned to the ground on September 25, 1987.

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