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Ms. Robson's parents' first apartment was on the ground floor of a building that overlooked the Boardwalk near Grand Boulevard. There, they had Ms. Robson's elder sister, who, according to family legend, got her rosy cheeks from the twice-a-day walks she and their mother took along the Boardwalk.

Years after the family moved away, Ms. Robson and her sisters would return to play at the arcade. As a parent, she would return again with her daughters to bike and eat ice cream. And when her mother dies, she plans to buy one of the traditional memorial boardwalk benches for her mother, now in her 80s and long divorced from her father.

So there she was on Saturday, in front of her parents' former apartment, hacking off a small keepsake from the old landmark before it was demolished. Chewed and smashed by the wrath of Hurricane Sandy, this boardwalk would have to make way for a new one.

"I felt a little sentimental, so I took a little piece of wood," she said. "I'll either save it for myself or give it to my mother — it was a part of my parents' life that was happy."

Bike rides, ice cream, first kisses, illicit beers and trips to the arcade: these were the moments that made up a lifetime for the Long Beach Boardwalk and its faithful visitors. They were all recalled on Saturday, as hundreds of people crowded into a beach parking lot and waved from nearby balconies for a ceremony marking the 76-year-old structure's end.

Among first kisses, engagements and deaths, the Boardwalk was a fixture of quieter rituals. Many said they would miss their long walks in the morning, or after work to unwind, across stretches where they were sure to know almost everyone around.

Thirty days from now, it will all be gone. City officials hope to build the new Boardwalk by the summer, said Scott J. Mandel, the vice president of the Long Beach City Council, but he cautioned residents against getting their hopes up for any specific date.

The town is also considering building sea barriers against the next storm surge, a form of protection Long Beach rejected six years ago amid complaints that dunes would block ocean views and interfere with tourism.

"Sandy was a wake-up call for us," Mr. Mandel said, standing in front of a sign that read, "Coming soon: A new & better Long Beach."

Long Beach's boardwalk has been destroyed at least once since first being finished in 1914; the more than two-mile long current incarnation, which began to be rebuilt in 1936, survived many storms — until Hurricane Sandy.

"Let's view today as a milestone," Mr. Mandel told the teary, clapping crowd. "We're starting a new chapter in Long Beach's history."

Standing in front of a band shell that normally plays host to the Boardwalk's annual summer concerts, council members and other local elected officials told their own stories of the place and promised a new, safer, bigger and better Boardwalk.

"It won't be the same," said City Councilman John C. McLaughlin, who recalled growing up in Long Beach and stealing his first kiss underneath the wooden slats. "Hopefully we'll be able to make a new Boardwalk that will satisfy the next generation."

Denise Ford, the local Nassau County legislator, who moved here in 1980, calls herself a virtual newcomer in a town where families tend to stay for generations. But she has been here long enough to see her daughter become engaged in front of the memorial bench for her husband, one of many lining the Boardwalk.

The benches are "like Long Beach people's second tombstone," as a resident in the crowd, Kathy Boyle, put it. They will be stored, to be put out again when the new Boardwalk is built.

There were as many different ways of saying goodbye to the Boardwalk, it seemed, as there had been of enjoying it. Some clambered up to it on a wooden plank, circumventing a roped-off ramp, and snapped photos against the railings. Others sat quietly on the memorial benches, staring out at sand and sky. Still others celebrated their boardwalk the way they had always done, with a leisurely walk or a bike ride over the graying planks.

And nearly everybody wanted a piece of it to take home. People stood around, clutching brick-size bits of wood the city was handing out or longer, sawed-off sections. A few lugged home more personal totems. They included Jacob Miller, 11, who trotted away from the beach with a metal pole at least as tall as he was balanced over his shoulders.

For a few, no souvenir would be enough. Toby Kobak, 60, who still has not been able to return to her flooded home, wept into her husband's shoulder as she refused the offer of a wooden memento. "I can't," she said.

"I love this town, and it's so sad," she said. She smiled a moment. "But we'll be back."