Back around 1870, when developer James A. Bradley first saw it, the area was a tranquil expanse of virgin forest and sand dunes adjacent to Ocean Grove, touted to vacationing city-dwellers for its health-restoring qualities.

In a few short years, Bradley replaced the trees and dunes with wide, flaring avenues lined with massive and modern Victorian hotels, and a new plank boardwalk and fishing pier bustled with vacationers.

A generation or two later, the flavor again changed to early 20th-century modern, with larger and less fire-prone buildings like the Santander Apartments and the Monterey, Metropolitan and Berkeley Carteret Hotels defining Asbury Park's skyline.

The boardwalk, in particular, has been an ever-changing kaleidoscope of building styles and attractions as fires, storms, and changing public tastes left their mark. The current Casino is not the original one that Bradley would have recognized, and Tillie grinned from the boardwalk's long-defunct Steeplechase ride years before he settled on the Palace Amusements.

Saltwater swimming pools - including the enclosed Natatorium and legendary Monte Carlo - came and went; the famous Arthur Pryor bandshell was relocated from a round wooden gazebo on the southern boardwalk to the top of the Howard Johnson pavilion; and the once-grand Esplanade, Seventh Avenue Pavilion, Fifth Avenue Arcade, and countless other boardwalk buildings, amusements and businesses exist only on fading postcards.

But whatever the era, Asbury Park has always prided itself on being not only "modern" but way ahead of the curve, whether it was the electric lights and trolleys of Bradley's time, the almost 1,100 new housing units built between 1916 and 1931, or the space-age wackiness of the Howard Johnson restaurant.

But Asbury Park also has a less tangible, emotionally charged impact on people from around the world, who use terms like "fun", "unique" and "unforgettable" to describe their memories here.

Given how many Asbury Park beachfronts we've had in the last 130 years -- and how little of them remains -- how do we decide what the next Asbury Park boardwalk should look like?

Enter Nory Hazaveh and his associate, Kerry Mason, of SOSH Architects in New York and Atlantic City. Hazaveh - who studied architecture and engineering at Columbia, Brooklyn and City Universities in New York - was hired by Asbury Partners to develop a "look" for the boardwalk area and, in particular, the boardwalk pavilions and four new gazebos.

He caught my interest the day he plunked down the drawing of a predictable "faux-Victorian" gazebo and announced, "If you want the type of cheap, prefabricated gazebos they sell along Route 206, you don't need us. You need a pick-up truck."

Hazaveh's initial gazebo designs are flights of pure fun and fancy -- in other words, pure Asbury Park.

Music notes and piano keys become imaginative seating. Trash cans and information booths sprout musical instruments. A pedal-powered machine attached to a proposed gazebo could someday fill the air with music - given it doesn't drive neighboring vendors to distraction.

One imaginative proposal features four forearms with hands shaking out a colorful beach towel. The wind-whipped towel forms the gazebo roof, and the four arms are the supporting pillars. (Okay, okay: So Hazaveh's initial rendering actually shows four arms shaking out the top of a woman's bathing suit, but this unshakable '70s feminist greeted that brainstorm with the enthusiasm of, well, a wet beach towel.)

Nory's proposed designs for the Third and Fourth Avenue pavilions are equally imaginative, with curving roofs to mimic ocean waves and sand dunes, sparkling colors to catch the sunlight, and a light and airy atmosphere.

"Every project is a love affair," Hazaveh said, "and we start by searching to see what makes each place so special." Hazaveh began by taking dozens of detailed boardwalk photos and mounting them on a wall. Immediately, a few things became apparent.

First, certain patterns were repeated from building to building, each with its own unique twist. For example, horses are a common theme, whether they be carousel horses or the flying horses and seahorses adorning the Casino and Convention Hall. Spiral patterns also appear everywhere, from the Convention Hall stair railings to the copper swirls framing the carousel house Medusas.

These subtly related patterns "make you feel like you are in the same town, without each building being a copy of the other," Hazaveh said. As a result, he incorporates these same icons into his new designs, such as flying horses on the facade of a proposed hotel.

"The new buildings should emotionally and historically connect themselves to the past using the icons of the past," he said. Other Asbury Park themes - music, wind, sand and waves - also inspire his buoyant and non-linear designs.

But mining the past doesn't mean building a mindless, "theme park" imitation of the old Asbury Park.

"The people who designed this place were way ahead of their time, and the 1930s buildings were pretty high-tech and advanced," Hazaveh explained. "For us to give this town a mere copy of something it had in the past would have been a lie, a cheap way out."

Hazaveh's design solutions thus anticipate "how life will be when this place is complete" and the boardwalk is shared by both residents and visitors. For example, anticipating the increased importance of Ocean Avenue for shopping and entertainment, he designed the boardwalk pavilions with street-level entrances on Ocean Avenue.

He also envisions making the pavilions rooftops available for a vibrant night life, and he advocates using lots of creative visual cues - for example, a giant fish to mark a seafood restaurant - to make the beachfront experience appealing and fun.

And although the Convention Hall, Paramount Theatre, power plant, Casino arcade and carousel house will be historically restored, he wants to ensure that people think of them as full of life and not as intimidating museums.

"If we just restore the historical buildings and put a bunch of bland strip malls in between, then five years from now we'll be wondering why no one comes here," he said.

"It's like the difference between eating caviar once in your lifetime or eating good bread three times a day," he said. "This is not just for the tourists. We want it to be appealing to the residents, present and future, who will be here every day."