Work and unusual places · South Toms River

Birdville: birdhouses, a tree lookout, and a concrete chapel

Contemporary maker’s letter · Federal survey · Surviving landmark

Albert P. Greim’s roadside birdhouse works drew visitors to South Toms River. The maker’s own letter and a federal building survey reveal the ambitions behind the eccentric concrete building still associated with Birdville.

A factory made for birds and visitors

A 1991 Historic American Buildings Survey history says Greim established a birdhouse factory on Flint Road in 1914. He watched birds from a raised room among an oak tree’s branches and designed rustic houses from his observations. The survey says thousands were sold through Wanamaker stores and that Japan’s emperor placed a large order. Both sales claims trace to a 1933 Ocean County Sun article cited by the survey; that article has not been inspected independently, so the imperial order remains an attributed report.

Greim was also building a concrete home, office and chapel he called Oratory Bethlehem. In a 1921 letter to the New Jersey Courier, preserved in a museum transcription, he corrected a report that he was merely adding cement blocks to a shop. He described poured concrete, a partly finished dwelling, recycled lumber, a planned roof garden, a chapel, and tiles influenced by Henry Chapman Mercer. He credited Stanley Grover and a high-school boy with helping build it. Greim’s letter is a direct voice for his intentions, while later surveys tell us what was built and used.

What survived

The federal history says Birdville hosted South Toms River’s first council meetings after incorporation in 1927 and that the enterprise declined during the Depression. The borough’s account of its seal says a concrete structure remains at Center and Mill Streets, though it gives Greim’s middle initial as F. His signed letter and the federal survey both give P.; this entry follows those sources.

The map point is the public intersection used to orient a visit, not a claim that every 1914 workshop wall survives or that the property is open. View from lawful public space. The 1921 letter’s plans, the 1933 sales report, and the later standing building are different kinds of evidence; none alone describes the entire venture.

Sources and research leads

A. P. Greim, letter to the editor, New Jersey Courier (1921), museum transcription — Greim’s account of materials, collaborators and plans; original newspaper page not inspected.
Historic American Buildings Survey NJ-1017, pp. 1–2 — Factory, tree observation room, chapel, council meetings and its cited 1933 article.
Borough of South Toms River, history of its seal — Present landmark at Center and Mill Streets, with conflicting middle initial.

The original May 19, 1933 Ocean County Sun report and parcel-level building records would help verify the sales claims and distinguish the surviving structure from lost parts of the complex.