Did You Know? Lucy the Elephant Has Stood Six Stories Tall in Margate Since 1881
Margate's Lucy the Elephant was built in 1881 as a giant real estate ad. Her two big relatives are gone, her neighbors saved her, and now she's a National Historic Landmark. Nobody warned me.
Nobody warned me there's a six-story elephant in Margate. And somehow her size is the least strange thing about her.
She was a sales pitch
Lucy the Elephant went up in 1881. Real estate promoter James V. Lafferty built her back when Margate went by the name South Atlantic City, and the idea was simple: make something so big and so weird that people would come out just to stare at it, and then sell them a beach lot while their mouths were still open.
