In Long Branch, the big news of the summer season of 1882 was the construction of the grand Scarboro Hotel at the corner of Ocean Ave. and S. Bath Ave. The ornate Queen Anne-style hotel had 200 rooms in 4 stories and an attic. In 1916, Louis and Rebecca "Beck" Shapiro acquired and remodeled it, and the hotel served a largely Jewish clientele. On September 12th, 1941, fire destroyed the Scarboro, the last of Long Branch's grand hotels. Beck Shapiro's father, Hyman Schneider, had come to Long Branch in 1892, opened a kosher grocery, and was a founder of Congregation Brothers of Israel. Beck's sister Fan married Isaac B. "Barney" Mailer, and their first child, Norman Kingsley Mailer, was delivered by Dr. Slocum in Long Branch on January 31, 1923. Norman Mailer began writing at the Scarboro Hotel, entered Harvard at 16, continued to summer in Long Branch, and wrote numerous stories there. His first novel, The Naked and the Dead, was published in 1948. The Armies of the Night in 1969 and The Executioner's Song in 1980 won Pulitzer Prizes. He went on to a long career as a novelist, journalist, biographer, filmmaker, politician, and activist.