Taylor Swift spent 12 summers as a child on this beach on the New Jersey coast
The town of Stone Harbor is reminiscent of the pop star’s childhood vacations.
STONE HARBOR, NJ — Longtime residents of a New Jersey coastal town can still remember the days when they saw Taylor Swift, a blue-eyed girl with blonde curls and plenty of ambition.
“I still see her standing there,” says Madilynn Zurawski, the owner of Coffee Talk, a 30-year-old cafe. Zurawski points to a front corner of her shop that in an earlier decade served as a stage where local talent performed. One of those artists, Swift, was barely out of her teens. “We have a picture of her up front on the stage. Do you want to see it?”
Zurawski walks over to a mantelpiece and picks up a black frame with a white matting that shows a slender girl in a white T-shirt and black pants singing into a microphone and strumming her guitar. The cafe’s owner pulls out her phone and shows a video of Swift singing “Lucky You,” a song that doesn’t appear on any of the singer’s 11th-era albums.
“I wish it had been a little longer,” Zurawski says. “I mean, she was here for two years and back then there was entertainment every night. So she would come in and sing. She was charming.”
Swift told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2009, “I would drag my parents to these places and all their friends would come and throw dollars in my tip jar.”
A dozen years of countless memories
From ages 2 to 14, Swift’s family made the three-hour drive from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, to the Jersey Shore, where they lived in their beach house on Third Avenue. The summer house has been demolished, but a blue plaque on a new house on the same site reads “Swift Waters.”
Before leaving for Nashville, Swift spent her vacation with her brother Austin and her parents, enjoying the ocean from sunrise to sunset. She authored an 87-page book with the copyright title “Girl Named Girl” and wrote an unreleased song, “Smokey Black Nights.”
Swift’s father, Scott Swift, volunteered as a firefighter paramedic.
“As far as I know, he was a member of the rescue crew at the time,” says Chief Roger Stanford, who has been with the department for 34 years. “We used to have a separate organization, but still a rescue crew that operated the ambulance. Now it’s all consolidated with the fire department.”
Coincidentally, the department number is 13, Swift’s favorite number.
Childhood photos on permanent loan to the museum
A handful of photos are on permanent loan to the Stone Harbor Museum. It’s a time capsule in which a little girl with her hand on her hip and wearing a green and yellow bathing suit is frozen forever. A large cutout is on display where fans can take photos.
“Everyone loves to pose,” says Teri Fischer, president of the museum’s board of trustees. “The little girls will do that, and we’ll take pictures of them. And they can take as many pictures as they want.”
Since the exhibition opened on June 13, the downtown museum has seen six times as many visitors.
“On a good day, we’d have about 25 people there,” Fisher adds. “Today, we’ve got 150 people.”
In addition to childhood photos, the museum also offers several scavenger hunts that trace the singer’s history with the city. While music videos play on the wall, fans can learn how Swift used to sing karaoke at the now-closed restaurant Henny’s.
“Honestly, what she has given to this museum is a huge gift,” Fisher says. The exhibit will be open through the end of September, and while admission is free, the museum is asking for donations to help pay off its $437,600 mortgage.
Fans can donate here.
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