By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Mayor Leonard Desiderio stood in the middle of decorative brickwork that resembles a large compass engraved in a circle on Sea Isle City’s oceanfront Promenade.
His arms were raised as if beseeching the heavens as he began to spin around in a circle. Then he blurted out “Echo, Echo, Echo.”
While watching her father’s antics, his daughter, Carmela Desiderio, had an amused expression that all but said, “Are you kidding, dad?”
“There’s an echo. You can hear it,” the mayor said reassuringly.
Think about the great mysteries of the world: Stonehenge, the Bermuda Triangle and the Jersey Devil, for instance. Now, Sea Isle’s inexplicable echo chamber can be added to the list.
Never heard of it? Simply walk out to the Promenade at the ocean end of John F. Kennedy Boulevard, stand in the middle of the replica of the compass next to Excursion Park, and say something.
Then listen. Sure enough, there’s an echo – as if you’re calling out in the middle of the mountains. Even the most jaded skeptics will be convinced.
“You’re going to have hundreds of people out here looking to find the echo,” Desiderio predicted once word gets out about the strange phenomenon.
He was joined in the middle of the compass by Sea Isle resident Dot Horcher, who began laughing when she heard her echo.
“This is a mystery. I love it. I’ll have to bring my husband down here and pretend that I don’t hear the echo,” Horcher joked.
The decorative brickwork that encircles the compass was part of Sea Isle’s multimillion-dollar “Beach to Bay” beautification of the main entryway into town completed in 2013. A series of road, landscaping, safety and municipal projects were added to the central corridor stretching from the city’s bayfront marina to the beachfront Promenade over a five-year span.
City spokeswoman Katherine Custer said that the echo people can hear while standing in the middle of the compass isn’t really a mystery after all.
“It’s a natural phenomenon when you have a circular encasing like that,” she said of the brickwork surrounding the compass. “It makes an echo effect.”
Custer loosely compared Sea Isle’s echoing compass to the “Whispering Gallery” at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The curved dome wall in St Paul’s is adept at carrying whispers.
“It’s the same concept,” Custer said of the echo effect of Sea Isle’s compass. “But it only works if you stand in the very middle.”
The part of the Beach to Bay project that included the decorative brickwork and compass was completed in 2011 at a cost of $2.1 million. It also included the Band Shell in Excursion Park that serves as the venue for concerts and other summer entertainment in Sea Isle.
“It was a happy occurrence and was a byproduct of a well-planned out entertainment area,” Custer said of the echoing compass.
Still don’t believe it? Go listen for yourself … go listen for yourself … go listen for yourself.
