Cast Up by the Sea
In the age before highways and airports could whisk people hundreds of miles in a few hours, they came by rail to places like Atlantic City. At a time when much of the New Jersey Shore were still fishing villages, Atlantic City was a thriving destination with worldly restaurants, grand hotels, a bustling Boardwalk, and one of the first “beach cultures” in the United States. And a huge part of that beach culture were the artists who sculpted in the sand just off the Boardwalk. –– Atlantic City Alliance, 2014 (1)
Human beings must have formed wet sand into imaginative shapes from the time we first left footprints on a sandy beach; for ages, children and adults have modeled walls, castles, dams, and coarse creatures that existed only until the next high tide. There are ancient historical references to sand sculpture in ancient Egypt and India, but the more recent innovation of sand sculpture as an occupation or formal competition is said to have begun just before the turn of the twentieth century on the beaches of Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Legend has it that in 1897 a mysterious character named Philip McCord, who claimed to be from Philadelphia, (remember this city, it will appear in this story again) carved a pile of wet sand below the Atlantic City boardwalk into the life-sized figures of a woman and child seemingly washed up onto the shore after being drowned at sea. That maudlin seaside tableau was repeated in beach sand for decades and became known as “Cast Up by the Sea.” There are no known photographs of McCord or that first 1897 sculpture, but it must have looked something like the photo below, a circa 1905 image of James Taylor, a subsequent Atlantic City sand artist. Taylor would soon become very well known for his own depiction of “Cast Up by the Sea,” as well as many other subjects––but questions linger: Did Taylor take up the art and replicate “Cast Up” after observing Philip McCord’s work? Did the two men know each other? Why have no other accounts of McCord surfaced?
“Cast Up by the Sea,” James Taylor, Atlantic City, circa 1905.
By the turn of the twentieth century, luxurious hotels, fine restaurants, alluring shops, and connecting railroad lines drew visitors from all over the world to the resort destination of Atlantic City. The prevailing lore is that Philip McCord took note of the crowds on the Boardwalk and offered them his sand sculpture performance in hopes of cash tips for his efforts.
In 1992, Holly Metz wrote a detailed and well-researched article titled “Selling Sand & Sea: Sand Sculptors & the Development of the Atlantic City Resort, 1897 – 1944,” which appeared in the Summer Issue of The Clarion (now titled Folk Art) published by the American Folk Art Museum in New York.(2) In the article Metz attributed the identification of Philip McCord as the original 1897 sculptor to a 1942 article in the Atlantic City Press by reporter Frank Butler. Metz noted however that “no 1897 reference to McCord could be found in available issues of the Press as most were destroyed in a fire.”
Let’s step back in time a bit––before the throngs of city visitors arrived to play in the surf and sand of the Atlantic City resort––and before these artists-in-sand began to entertain the crowds. For centuries, this stretch of the Atlantic coast had been a bountiful home to Native Peoples; its location, the barrier island of Abescon, had provided rich as well as marsh lands and access to both the Atlantic Ocean and fresh inland water. The climate was mild, and there was more than abundant fish, game, and plant life.
High Tide at Atlantic City, William Richards, 1873
The ancestors of the Eastern Algonquian Confederacy, who called themselves “Lenni Lanape” (original people) and “Unalachtigo” (people who live near the ocean), lived on this coast for thousands of years before the Europeans appeared. In the 1600s, Dutch and English settlers began arriving, and by 1776, there was a bustling seaport at Abescon Creek and European settlers began pushing the Native Americans out of their way. By the last decades of the 18th century, most of the Native Americans had been driven out or replaced, and by 1860, their remaining population had endured forced migration to reservations in Oklahoma.
The area’s natural beauty and proximity to Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Washington were recognized by developers as prime real estate for a resort. The first commercial hotels in Atlantic City were built in the 1850s, and rail service from major population centers began in 1854. By the turn of the century, there was an entirely different panorama on the Atlantic shore.
As the sand-sculpture story goes, soon after completing that 1897 work, known as “Cast Up by the Sea,” Philip McCord was joined by other artists who shaped the beach sand into figures and scenes representing current interests and events in return for coins tossed from onlookers on the Boardwalk above. Sand sculpture was an immediate hit with visitors to Atlantic City, and artists created three-dimensional portrayals of political figures, Civil War generals, exotic animals, women, children, social and religious motifs, and popular works of art. Even the labor movement and women’s rights campaigns were represented in sand.
Postcard views Atlantic City, (L) 1910, and (R) 1934.
Enterprising performers and artists of all varieties responded to the increasing crowds by setting up shop along the Boardwalk, and the work of sand sculptors was a large part of the show. Conventioneers, vacationers, and day-tripping families, “rail birds,” as they were called, would hang on the Boardwalk railings to watch the amazing forms take shape. “Passing the hat” and coins tossed onto the artists’ cloth banners supported the resourceful sand artists, and hundreds of colorful tourist postcards depicted the artists and their work and helped draw visitors to Atlantic City into the 1920s and 30s.
Unfortunately, this burgeoning resort was officially segregated in 1900. People of color were not welcome on the Atlantic City beaches or Boardwalk except as workers behind the scenes, entertainers, or handlers of the rolling boardwalk chairs. For a few years in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Black tourists were allowed on the beach and Boardwalk only one day of the year, just after Labor Day, when the customary tourist season had ended. An article in The Atlantic City Press, September 6, 1906, records that the operators of the theaters and other amusements welcomed people of color for that one-day outing. During the Jim Crow era, Black tourists were directed to the unofficial Black beach along Missouri Avenue on the north side of town. This segregated arrangement did not begin to change until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Postcards from Atlantic City's early days not only revealed the existence of racial discrimination and segregation, but they also employed it to appeal to white visitors in ways that were often less than subtle. The card below, published by Hugh C. Leighton Company of Portland, Maine, depicts a number of horseback riders on a postcard that was mailed in 1908. The image reveals three Black riders on white horses and three white riders on dark horses; and the printed description reads, “Three chocolate drops on whites; three whites on chocolate drops.” The man on the right seems to be in charge and gives the impression that the tableau was carefully arranged as an attempt at humor.
Historical records, however, do identify at least one early twentieth-century sand artist as African-American, Owen Golden, who was well accepted by both spectators and his fellow artists. Mr. Golden was reported to have only one arm, but despite this handicap, he produced quality work that was pleasing to his audience.
Postcard published in 1907 by Hubin’s Big Post Card Store,
welcoming the conventions of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
(Fellow in derby hat is sculptor James Taylor.)
As the number of sand artists increased, some boardwalk businesses began to complain that they were losing customers, and the city struggled with rowdy crowds, pickpockets, objections to subject matter that included nudes, and the growing number of less-skilled artists who produced poor-quality work. Eventually, the city was forced to respond by regulating the sand artists with licenses, quality standards, and design approval.
The sand-sculpture art form struggled into the 1930s despite increased competition from other attractions like “Human Roulette” and “Human Niagara” carnival rides, pageants, theater performances, and concerts. The final blow (pun intended) came in 1944 when the Great Atlantic hurricane struck Atlantic City, ravaging the Boardwalk, flooding many of the hotels, and destroying the amusement piers along the beach. Lost too were the sand sculptures and the stands the artists had built around them. The city leaders, finally seeing an excuse to rid themselves of what had become an increasing nuisance, removed the remaining sculpture structures.
Competitive sand sculpture had planted its feet firmly in the sand under the Atlantic City boardwalk and spread from there to beaches around the world, but after the hurricane, competitive sand sculpture was finished in Atlantic City for the next half-century.
Sand sculpture as an art form with occasional competitions continued to be part of beach cultures with a strong revival of the art in California in the 1970s and other contests scattered on the beaches of the world. In Texas, Walter McDonald and Lucinda Wierenga started Sandcastle Days in 1988 on South Padre Island, and the annual event continues today.(3) In 1997, the first annual SandFest(4) was organized in Port Aransas, Texas. That same year, one hundred years after Philip McCord first sculpted “Cast Up By the Sea,” BeachFest ’97 took place in Atlantic City, with a sponsored “Sandtennial” sculpting contest of more than twenty sculptors working with tons of sand for the crowd.
In 2013, John Gowdy, a New Jersey-based “international” sand artist, and others arranged for the World Championship of Sand Sculpture to return to Atlantic City! With the help of AC Alliance, The World Championship of Sand Sculpting Event began in Atlantic City on June 13, 2013.
Okay, back to the Mystery of Philip McCord and James Taylor:
Below is a postcard mailed in 1910 with a later version of “Cast Up by the Sea” by James Taylor. There are many contemporary accounts of Philip McCord’s 1897 sculpture in Atlantic City, and sand sculptors commonly regard McCord as the “godfather” of their art, but we find only scant historical records of the event and no photographs of McCord.
1910 Postcard, Monterrey, California.
Message: This is another view of the kind of work I showed you on the last postcard.
And to think this could be done with nothing but the sand as found along the beach.
We do know that James Taylor was working in Atlantic City as a sand sculptor in 1899, and that he also worked as a hotel waiter in 1904, according to the city directory. His work as a sand sculptor in Atlantic City and the beaches of California was well recorded on postcards and newspaper articles.
During this era, the motif of “Cast Up by the Sea” would have resonated with the public, as shipwrecks were not uncommon at the time, and similar subjects were described in art and literature. The scene is possibly based on works like this 1873 wood engraving by Winslow Homer, also titled, “Cast Up by the Sea.”
Postcard of 1873 wood engraving, “Cast Up by the Sea,” Winslow Homer.
By 1908, sculptor James Taylor had left Atlantic City for the West Coast, where he worked the beaches of California for a few years, and he complimented the moldable nature of the sand when compared to that of the Atlantic coast. The woman clutching a babe to her breast was usually the centerpiece of his work, and her dress, full of folds and undulations, took Taylor about two hours to complete. He knew how to work the crowd, waiting until a decent number of onlookers had gathered before he began a piece. He never mourned the fleeting nature of his chosen art form and their loss to the incoming tide, saying, “The material is still there and I can do the work again.”
James Taylor working in front of the Steel Pier, circa 1906.
Postcard titled, “Afternoon Tea.” James Taylor 1906.
Note the two sticks at the waterline which may have helped Taylor keep track of the incoming tide.
1909 postcard, James Taylor, Cliff House, San Francisco.
James J. Taylor was born in 1860. He died at Seaside Hospital, Long Beach, in 1918. He had been found in a shack on Alamitos Bay, ill and destitute. Taylor had often admonished his audience, “Don’t forget the worker,” as a way of asking for donations or tips, as well as recognition for the class of “workers,” and for himself. His work and his name remain today on thousands of old postcards and photographs. Time, like the incoming tide, washes the sand clean again.
But wait, what about Philip McCord?
After the apparent sand sculpture of “Cast Up By the Sea,” in 1897, Philip McCord seemed to disappear from the scene…
However, a few sources mention a shadowy “sand artist” who wandered the Midwest for 20 years or more, drifting like a hobo but occasionally stopping to sculpt the figures of “Cast Up by the Sea” in sand or riverbank mud.
An article in the April 16, 1915 issue of the Moberly Weekly Monitor, Moberly, Missouri, titled “Sculptor Astonishes Citizens with Life-Size Model of Mother and Babe,” reported that a man had arrived in town who gave his name only as “Sand Artist” as he worked in a pile of wet sand and fashioned the classic subject. The newspaper reported that he worked at the end of North Williams Street, and molded a pile of sand into a work he called “Washed Up By the Sea.” The artist stated that he worked in ashes or mud when no sand was available.
Was this visitor to Moberly Philip McCord? In a book by Don Eggspuehler, Teachings from Pop, AuthorHouse Press, 2014, the author relates a story about a mysterious sculptor who wandered Kansas and Iowa, occasionally carving the figures of a mother and babe into riverbank sand. The artist told onlookers that the figures represented his wife and child who drowned in the Pueblo, Colorado floods of 1922; he went on to say that he had studied art at the PhiladelphiaAcademy of Fine Arts. Eggspuehler’s account mixes the stories of Philip McCord and that of James Taylor, but he goes on to speculate about Philip McCord “making a meager living touring the country coast-to-coast carving the same scene over and over.”
A current online story by the Argus Newspaper Museum in Table Rock, Nebraska, reports a recent finding of a 1921 photograph and newspaper article in the museum’s archives titled “Cast Up by the Sea.”(5) Museum tour guide Sharla Sitzman reported finding the photograph below and an April 22, 1921, Argus Newspaper article which gave the artist’s name as J. B. McCord. He said he was from Philadelphia and had worked with some of the greatest artists in the country. McCord worked the sandy soil beside a creek using only his hands and a butcher knife. Beside him on the ground lay a sign that said, “Throw a penny to the artist.” It was estimated that he collected perhaps $15... and moved on...
Photograph of creek-side sculpture by Mr. McCord
Argus, Table Rock, Nebraska, 1921
We know that James Taylor died in 1918, and the accounts of Philip McCord seem to be only sparsely scattered throughout the first few decades of the twentieth century, but the two men seem to be distinctly separate individuals. No matter who first sculpted “Cast Up in by the Sea,” it is a melancholy yet engaging story that certainly left its mark in the sand.
The sands of time are quicksands ... so much can sink into them without a trace.
––Margaret Atwood
Note: Many thanks to my friend Mike Foster and his twin brother, Pat Foster, both sand sculptors and members in good standing of Sons of the Beach, for their support in shaping this small mound of gritty history.
If any of you readers can add sourced details about the lives of Philip McCord or James J. Taylor, please get in touch.
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