Spring Lake — 39.4% Irish-American, Two Register-Listed Cottages, and a Sober Look at 1916

A Spring-Fed Lake, Two Register-Listed Cottages, and a Nickname Earned Honestly

Spring Lake is this site's twenty-fourth New Jersey market, and the third and final of a three-market batch -- Point Pleasant Beach, then Belmar, then Spring Lake -- built immediately after Belmar. Nothing on this page re-covers Bay Head's historic-district figures, Point Pleasant Beach's or Belmar's own spines, Seaside Heights'/Seaside Park's spines, or any LBI market's storm-damage numbers; Spring Lake's own documented record stands on its own.

The borough takes its name from the clear, spring-fed lake that sits within its borders, and was incorporated on March 14, 1892, following a referendum held March 8, 1892. An independent borough called North Spring Lake, which had existed on its own since 1884, was annexed into Spring Lake on February 24, 1903. Geographically, Spring Lake is a small town -- 1.75 total square miles, 1.33 of them land and 0.41 water, meaning 23.60% of the borough is water -- bordering Belmar, Lake Como, Sea Girt, Spring Lake Heights, and Wall Township, all in Monmouth County.

Spring Lake's best-known identity is the one it is nicknamed for nationally: the "Irish Riviera." That nickname is not marketing shorthand invented for tourism -- it comes from a real, sourced demographic superlative. The 2000 census found that 39.4% of Spring Lake's residents identified as Irish-American ancestry, the highest percentage of any place in the entire United States. It is a genuinely distinctive fact, not a vague claim of "Irish heritage" common to many shore towns.

During the Gilded Age of the late 1800s and early 1900s, Spring Lake developed into a coastal resort for elites from New York City and Philadelphia, a stature the town's own history compares to Newport, Rhode Island and Bar Harbor, Maine. Two of that era's surviving cottages carry real, individual federal recognition: the Martin Maloney Cottage and the Audenried Cottage are each individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places. That is a meaningfully different kind of historic-preservation story than a whole covering historic district recognizing hundreds of structures at once -- Spring Lake's register listings are for these two specific cottages, not a district, and this page does not conflate the two. Marquis Martin Maloney's own philanthropy left another mark on the town: he constructed St. Catharine Roman Catholic Church, whose cornerstone was laid on St. Patrick's Day, 1901 -- a fitting date, given the town's Irish-American demographic identity.

Unlike most of the boardwalk-lined Jersey Shore towns already covered on this site, Spring Lake has no boardwalk at all. This is a real, confirmed, and deliberate characteristic of the town, not an oversight or a casualty of storm damage -- it is part of what gives Spring Lake its quieter, more residential, more upscale character relative to its boardwalk-heavy neighbors to the south.

Spring Lake's history also includes a real, sober, and well-documented tragedy that any honest account of the town has to address directly rather than around. On July 6, 1916, Charles Bruder, a Swiss bellhop, was killed by a shark approximately 130 yards from shore, becoming the second recorded victim in that summer's string of 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks. Those attacks are widely reported to have partly inspired Peter Benchley's novel Jaws -- though Benchley himself denied any direct connection between the two. This page presents both the reported-inspiration claim and Benchley's own denial side by side, asserting neither as more true than the other, and adds no further detail about Bruder's death beyond what is documented here. It is the death of a named historical person, and it is treated on this page with sobriety, not sensationalism.

Spring Lake counts a genuinely notable list of past and present residents: Craig Biggio (b. 1965), the Houston Astros Hall of Famer; actor Jack Nicholson (b. 1937); Wilbur Ross (b. 1937), the 39th U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 2017 to 2021; Robert Chesebrough (1837-1933), the inventor of Vaseline; William Gibbs McAdoo (1863-1941), U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under President Wilson; and author Mary Higgins Clark (1927-2020), whose 2001 novel On the Street Where You Live was set in Spring Lake. The town has also appeared on film, featured in The Subject Was Roses (1968), Ragtime (1981), and The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Every summer since 1977, the town has hosted the Spring Lake 5 Mile Run, described by the source documenting it as "the country's largest 5-mile race," with over 10,000 finishers recorded in 2014.

Spring Lake's population has followed a real, sustained, multi-decade decline: 3,567 residents at the 2000 census, down to 2,993 by 2010 (a 16.1% drop), down again to 2,789 by 2020 (a further 6.8% drop), with a 2023 estimate of 2,751. As of the 2010 census, population density was 2,250.8 people per square mile, 97.63% of residents identified as White, and median household income was $97,885 -- a figure disclosed here as a 2010 number, not a current one. This is a New Jersey market, with New Jersey's own real state sales tax and its own distinct property-tax structure; no other state's no-sales-tax framing applies here.

No exact current (2026) median home price, effective property-tax rate, or flood-insurance premium specific to Spring Lake was confirmed in this research pass, and no confirmed detail about the Martin Maloney or Audenried Cottages' present-day ownership or public access was found either -- treat any cost content on this page as illustrative only, and confirm current numbers directly with a local agent, insurer, or the borough itself. This page is independent research, not legal, tax, insurance, or financial advice; confirm anything time-sensitive with the appropriate licensed professional or local government office before making a decision.