History Of Our Namesake

 

Hugh MacRae, president of the Tide Water Power Company, the parent company of the trolley line, added to the enticements of sun and sand by building an immense public pavilion at the final stop on the line.

Lumina was constructed on 200 feet of ocean frontage at Station #7, the end of the line, and opened on June 3, 1905. Costing $7,000 to build--a very large sum in that day-- Lumina's 12,500 square foot complex presented visitors with three levels of games and activities.

A bowling alley, shooting gallery and snack shop occupied the ground floor, and a broad staircase led up to the dance hall with balcony for the band and onlookers.

The instantly-popular Lumina was enlarged several times to accommodate the crowds, and a movie screen was erected fifty feet into the surf.

In 1911, over 600 tungsten lights were placed along Lumina's exterior, and television news commentator David Brinkley, born and raised in Wilmington, remembers in the late 1930s changing light bulbs in the eight-foot high sign LUMINA on the roof, making the facility a glittering landmark easily seen from the mainland or from ships at sea.

 

In 1935 the trolley era gave way to the automobile, when a two-lane bridge was built across the Intracoastal Waterway to Harbor Island and then over Bank's Channel to the beach.

 

The Great Fire of Wrightsville Beach, Jan. 28, 1934, destroyed over one hundred cottages as well as the Oceanic Hotel, though Lumina survived.

Her lights went out during World War II, as naval authorities feared that allied shipping might be silhouetted against the brightly illuminated building, to the benefit of German submarines.  But Wrightsville Beach was far from the sea lanes, protected from submarines by shallow offshore waters. German U-boat Commander Erich Cremer, interviewed in 1984, recalled the waters off Wrightsville Beach as "a shallow grave" that protected the area from the coastal U-boat activity that raised anxieties at other points on the Atlantic shore.

A population of approximately 110 year-round residents in 1930 grew to 1500 in 1945. David Brinkley tells us in his autobiography, David Brinkley: A Memoir, that Wrightsville was not a place only for the rich, like some of the beaches of Long Island, Florida, and elsewhere. "Wilmington residents of even modest prosperity could have a house in town and a shingled cottage built up on stilts on the beach....For a schoolboy with a summer job at the beach making a little money working as a soda jerk...with girls all around in swimsuits that then seemed skimpy, the beach, the surf, Lumina with big bands playing every night, it was heaven."

Mostly heaven. But nature had a way of punctuating the good life at the beach. On October 15, 1954, Hurricane Hazel struck the mainland at the North Carolina-South Carolina border, hitting at high tide and at full moon with estimated winds between 125-140 MPH at Wrightsville Beach.

A storm surge of 12-14 feet above mean low water mark destroyed between 100-250 houses--estimates vary-- and damaged 500 more, again tearing out the Carolina Yacht Club and the town sewer plant.

Again, Wrightsville residents rebuilt. The seven-story Blockade Runner Motor Hotel open in 1964, reflecting confidence in the future of tourism at the beach.

Lumina era, however, was coming to a close. Crowds had diminished with the end of the trolley line, the building deteriorated, and was judged unsafe and condemned by town officials in 1972.

Historian Rupert Benson reminisced: "The finest orchestras of the country...the Sunday school picnics...pictures over the water in the evening for everyone to enjoy, a grand era of good enjoyment passed on. The auto changed all this and what a mess."

There was no Wrightsville Beach Preservation Society or other group to mobilize public support for at least the documentation of the famous landmark, if not the preservation of part or all of it, and Lumina was demolished in 1973.

Credit goes to "History of the Lumina" created by Wrightsville Beach Museum Website.