Setaro House

The West End Hotel wasn’t just a hotel.

It was more like a boarding house — with rooms rented by the day, maybe even by the hour, while some guests stayed for days, weeks, or months. Our own family living upstairs for 3 years at one point. With the train station right out front and the Setaro safe house next door, this block was built for movement: travelers, workers, families, and eventually bootleggers passing through Red Bank.

When we try to imagine what places like this felt like, we often look to the artwork of James Avati — who painted Red Bank residents, local settings, and scenes from the same world and time periods we’re exploring.

His work feels like a window into the rooms, staircases, bars, and boarding houses where these stories may have unfolded.

The more we dig, the more the West End Hotel becomes one of the key crossroads in this story.

One of the wildest stories we’ve found in Red Bank’s early 1900s history starts right here at the old West End Hotel.

In 1912, during a period of violent labor unrest tied to the Eisner factory, a man staying at the West End was reportedly carrying a jacket with explosives hidden inside.

He didn’t realize what he had on him until it was too late.

The bomb went off, blowing off his hand and badly mangling his arm — a brutal reminder that before Prohibition made headlines, Red Bank was already dealing with labor battles, intimidation, and violence in the streets.

And once again, the trail leads back to the West End Hotel.

Before Red Bank became the town we know today, it was a transportation hub.

Multiple rail lines moved in and out of town, including the Central Rail Line that once ran along Morford Place toward the river, Oyster Point, and Middletown.

That detail matters.

Because the original Setaro house — the family safe house — sat right here, directly behind the passenger and freight depot. People, goods, information, and eventually liquor could move in and out quickly.

When you understand the rail lines, the docks, and the streets, you begin to understand why this block mattered so much.

This wasn’t just a neighborhood.

It was a network.

Every time we follow this story, it brings us back to St. Anthony’s.

For decades, Red Bank’s Italian families fought to build a church of their own — a sacred place that would carry their faith, their names, their struggles, and their memory.

This mural of St. Anthony once stood behind the altar, watching over generations of families who helped build this community from the ground up.

But years before the church was finally built, there was already a clue in the newspapers: Stella Genovese singing at a fair to raise money for the new Italian Catholic church.

It’s a small detail — but in Rum on the Navesink, those small details open entire doors.



The story always comes back here.