Setaro House

BATMAN vs. SUPERMAN… on Broad Street. 🎬

Thirty years ago, Ben Affleck sat right here while filming Chasing Amy in Red Bank.

He would eventually become Batman.

Now, almost 30 years later, Henry Cavill — Superman — is filming The Man From Toronto 2 with Kevin Hart directly across Broad Street.

That coincidence alone is pretty damn cool.

But for me, this one hits a little differently.

I was in high school when Kevin Smith and this group of local Jersey filmmakers showed that you didn’t have to come from Hollywood to make movies. You could tell stories about the places and people you actually knew — and somehow those stories could reach the world.

The influence Clerks, Chasing Amy and that entire era had on me becoming a filmmaker is immeasurable.

So standing on Broad Street all these years later, watching another major movie being made here — directly across from a piece of that history — is a pretty cool full-circle moment.

And yeah… Batman on one side of Broad Street. Superman on the other.

Thank you very much, Kevin Smith. 🎥

Was this the entrance to Al Lillien’s Bat Cave? 🦇

At the very end of First Avenue in Atlantic Highlands, the road runs straight toward the base of the hill where Alexander “Al” Lillien’s property once began.

And this is where the story gets interesting.

For generations, there have been stories of tunnels running beneath Atlantic Highlands. We haven’t found evidence proving a tunnel connected First Avenue to Lillien’s compound—but we have uncovered some intriguing pieces of the puzzle.

The bootlegging roads we’ve been tracing lead back toward this property from the other side.

And my family has another piece of the story.

My aunt Rosie purchased the former Lillien property in 1980. Years later, while excavating the grounds, my cousins uncovered Lillien’s old underground garage—complete with hydraulic automobile lifts.

No tunnel was found connected to it.

But was there once another way into that hill?

Lillien wasn’t exactly driving an ordinary automobile, either. Contemporary accounts describe his operation as heavily armed, and we’ve uncovered evidence of the extraordinary infrastructure surrounding his compound.

So indulge me for a minute…

Imagine Lillien’s car roaring up First Avenue during Prohibition, reaching the base of the hill—and instead of climbing the property above ground…

disappearing underneath it.

Did it happen?

I don’t know.

But standing here, knowing what was buried on the property above us, it’s one hell of a question.

Was this Al Lillien’s Bat Cave?

Community Day at Bucky James Community Center

This is the moment that gave me chills.

For years, people have tried to untangle the history of Al Lillien’s compound in Atlantic Highlands from the neighboring property we now know as One Serpentine.

Then I found this.

In 1933, Justice magazine published an account of the government’s case against Lillien and included a photograph from his property showing an observation position overlooking the water.

Look at the arch.

Look at the columns.

Look at the view.

Now compare it to the footage I shot from the neighboring One Serpentine property in 2022.

And remember what we recently found inside the cupola at One Serpentine: a room outfitted with a ship’s wheel, compass, navigation equipment and a commanding view toward the water.

This does not prove the two properties were one operation.

But it gives us something much more interesting to investigate.

The federal government documented Lillien using an elevated observation setup overlooking these waters — and immediately next door survives another extraordinary observation/navigation space looking toward that same approach.

And the roads we’ve been tracing through the bootlegging investigation lead right back here.

Every time we peel another layer off this story, One Serpentine gets harder to explain away.

The question isn’t whether Al Lillien was watching the water. We now have photographic evidence that he was.

The question is:

What exactly was happening next door?

This may be the holy grail of our bootlegging research.

We traced the old bootlegging routes to this exact spot—and upstairs, inside the cupola, we found this.

A ship-style navigation room overlooking Sandy Hook Bay, eerily similar to what investigators described at Lillien’s operation next door.

We followed the trail here. And this was waiting at the end of it.

The roots of Monmouth County’s bootlegging story go back much further than Prohibition. 🍺

This massive 18-foot monument in West Long Branch was given to the Hathaway family at a reported cost of $2,000.

William Hathaway was once one of the largest landowners in the area that became Deal and would serve as the borough’s first mayor. But it’s the next generation that connects directly to the story I’ve been chasing.

By 1891, there’s evidence that William Hathaway Jr. was getting b**r from the Italian colony where my family lived.

That matters.

Because nearly 30 years before Prohibition, we can already see relationships forming between the Italian immigrant community and the Hathaway Inn—the same general area that would later become deeply connected to the rum-running era.

Eventually, Hathaway’s land would be developed around the Deal Esplanade and Hathaway Beach, where underground infrastructure would play its own role in the bootlegging stories that followed.

The Volstead Act didn’t create these networks overnight.

In some cases, the roots were already there for decades.

🍺 1891 → 🚤 Prohibition

Walk up this driveway and you’re walking straight into Monmouth County’s bootlegging history.

High above Atlantic Highlands sits 1 Serpentine — often confused with the once neighboring Hammerstein estate where bootlegger Alexander Lillien was murdered.

But this house has a Prohibition story all its own.

A bootlegger’s hideout overlooking the water… and one of the most fascinating houses I’ve ever had the opportunity to explore.

Before today’s Monmouth Park became synonymous with horse racing, the property carried the name — Elkwood Park, later referred to as Monmouth Park.

Then came 1924.

Newspapers reported that former owner Walter Lewisohn had been declared insane by a jury in New York and placed in a sanitarium. The property changed hands — and almost immediately, Elkwood Park became a major gathering place for the Ku Klux Klan.

A July 1924 report in The Daily Register described a massive Fourth of July Klan gathering there, with estimates ranging from 20,000 to 30,000 people, drawing members from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Think about that for a second.

Tens of thousands of Klansmen and Klanswomen gathering right here in Monmouth County.

It’s another piece of the landscape that helps explain what was happening here during Prohibition — and the world that local immigrant communities were navigating at the exact same time.

History isn’t always comfortable. But it happened here.

There are two houses on this ridge that constantly get confused (only one still remains). And the distinction matters.

Next door once stood the infamous Hammerstein — later home to bootlegger Alexander Lillien, whose murder in 1933 became one of the bloodiest chapters of Monmouth County’s Prohibition story.

But this is One Serpentine.

These videos come from a tour I was fortunate enough to take back in 2022, before the property was sold. And the house has a fascinating history all its own.

Standing here since the 1890s, its commanding position on the Atlantic Highlands–Middletown border offered sweeping views toward the water. During that 2022 visit, we explored the property, the barn where vehicles could pull underneath, and some of the features that helped us better understand how this location fit into the bootlegging routes running through the area.

And then there are details that have seemingly watched over it all — like those lions still standing guard outside. 🦁

It wasn’t the Hammerstein. It didn’t need to be. One Serpentine had secrets of its own.