Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times And Corruption of Atlantic City (7 page)

The Boardwalk brought resort patrons to the water’s edge, but the five amusement piers built on the ocean side lured them farther, overtop the ocean itself. The excitement at the very thought of it was more than most visitors could resist and they spent their money on any attraction offered on the piers. The first three piers that were built didn’t last beyond a single summer; winter storms destroyed them all. John Applegate, a Boardwalk photographer, built a sturdier one in 1884, a 670-foot-long pier consisting of an upper and lower deck, with an amusement pavilion at the outer end. Applegate’s pier was a profitable investment for its owner but it was small time compared to the success had by John Young, who purchased it in 1891.

John Young understood what Atlantic City was all about. Born across the bay in Absecon Village to an oyster man, he was fatherless at the age of three. He left school early for work to support himself. While working as a carpenter doing repair work on the Boardwalk, he met Stewart McShea, a Pennsylvania baker. McShea had money and Young had ideas. Together, they opened a roller-skating rink and a carousel, both of which were successful. When Applegate’s pier went up for sale they grabbed it, with Young in charge of the show.

Young extended Applegate’s pier to a length of 2,000 feet, then searched the world over for attractions to lure the masses. His pier was a glittering palace: It contained the “world’s largest ballroom,” a hippodrome, an exhibit hall with everything from butterflies to mutants, a reproduction of a Greek temple, and an aquarium where he kept special finds from his daily fish hauls. Young held dances, promoted contests, gave away prizes, featured exhibitions, and sponsored productions of both contemporary and classical plays in Young’s Pier Playhouse. He even brought Sarah Bernhardt to his pier to star in a performance of “Camile.” The Captain had something for everybody.

The pier Young bought from Applegate was destroyed by fire in 1902. Young bought out McShea and rebuilt in time for the next summer, calling his new pier “Young’s Million Dollar Pier.” His pier was a tinsel palace that dazzled Boardwalk strollers. Highlighted by gobs of gaudy Victorian gingerbread, it housed attractions designed to lure a wide cross-section of patrons. It worked like a charm. At the height of his success, Young was reaping an annual income of more than a million dollars, and all before the income tax.

Young didn’t hide his wealth and erected a marble mansion on his pier so he could, to use his own words, “fish out my kitchen window.” The home included furnishings from around the world and was recognized by the U.S. Post Office as “No. 1, Atlantic Ocean, U.S.A.” Although it was constructed on a pier, there was a formal garden fronting Young’s mansion. The garden included statues imported from Florence, Italy. “They were undraped in the classic tradition and considered daring for their time. His Adam and Eve group especially caused a sensation when a bolt of lightning struck Eve in an embarrassing spot. The humor of the situation hit the press. Newspapers and newsreels gave them nationwide coverage.” The lighting and landscaping for Young’s palace were designed by his long-time friend, Thomas Edison. The Captain and the inventor spent many an afternoon together fishing off the end of the pier behind the mansion. Eventually washed into the sea by a winter storm, Young’s mansion was the envy of his customers.

Young and other Boardwalk merchants who modeled themselves after him were, in large part, responsible for institutionalizing the concept of the spending spree in American culture. Thanks to them, Atlantic City developed into a place where visitors came knowing they would part with their money. The tourists did so gladly, because the Boardwalk merchants were able to convince them that they were having the time of their lives.

The counterpart of the Boardwalk merchants were the resort hotel and boardinghouse owners who were pioneers willing to sink their money into the sand in hopes of making a fortune. Many of them came out of Philadelphia and viewed Atlantic City as a new frontier of the hotel industry. For them, the resort was Philadelphia’s summertime playground, and they claimed the market as their own. While they participated in the national advertising campaign of the railroads, the resort’s hotel and boardinghouse operators knew they couldn’t survive without Philadelphia.

The first hotel owner to experience a large success was Benjamin Brown, who purchased the 600-room United States Hotel. Constructed by the Camden-Atlantic Railroad, the hotel had changed hands several times before he acquired it. Shortly after acquiring the hotel, Brown was wooing his visitors with ads stating, “Large rooms, furnished in walnut … gas in every room … morning, afternoon and evening concerts by celebrated orchestras.” Benjamin Brown was every bit the showman that John Young was. Working together with the railroad, he launched an aggressive campaign toward attracting the rich and famous, using them as a draw for nouveau riche social climbers. He gave well-known visitors all expenses paid vacations, provided he was permitted to use their names in his promotional literature. On one occasion Brown was able to attract President Ulysses S. Grant. “My father’s friend, Al, said Grant drank so much when he was in town that he probably doesn’t remember being here.” A holiday was declared for Grant’s arrival and ads were taken in the major newspapers of the Northeast, showing that Cape May wasn’t the only resort that could host a president.

Another influential hotelier was Charles McGlade, owner of the Mansion House, which stood at the corner of Pennsylvania and Atlantic avenues. A low, rambling three-story frame structure, the place was floundering when McGlade took it over. He turned things around quickly. McGlade, a restless bundle of energy, supervised every aspect of his hotel. He began by promoting his property and was the first resort hotelier to use bold commercial display print for his newspaper advertising, like the ads run by retailers. Prior to McGlade, hotel advertisements were routinely set in a style comparable to today’s classified ads: five or six lines, in modest type, under the heading “resorts” was the conventional practice of the staid Victorian era. McGlade ignored convention. He shouted his message using eye-catching bold print ads in the major Northeastern newspapers. It worked and his competitors soon followed his example, creating a revolution in hotel advertising.

The master of the Mansion House was responsible for innovations that went beyond advertising. Prior to McGlade, most of the town’s hotels and boardinghouses were sparsely furnished, creating a sober, almost spartanlike environment—what one might expect to find on a religious retreat. McGlade brought creature comforts to Atlantic City, which local hoteliers hadn’t considered worth the investment for businesses operating only during the summer season. The first thing he did was to transform the “parlor” into a sophisticated hotel lobby. Bare walls and sparse furnishings gave way to frescoed ceilings of flowers and figures painted by local artist, Jerre Leeds.

McGlade created an aura of glamour. He installed elegant carpeting, expensive wallpaper, cushioned lounge chairs, crystal chandeliers, polished glass, and mahogany paneling. The bare walls and stiff furniture of McGlade’s competitors soon gave way to a whole line of improvements that transformed the resort hotel industry. “The bar, a principal part of all successful hotel operations, was transformed from a saloon to salon” and became a popular meeting place for visitors from the other hotels and boardinghouses. He also installed an outdoor dance pavilion, permitting guests to enjoy the open air rather than a hot dining room, which is where his competitors permitted dancing. More importantly, McGlade set a standard for entertaining his customers that soon became an Atlantic City trademark. He arranged for his guests to be met at the train station by an elegant horse-drawn carriage and had them transported to his hotel where he would personally greet them. He oversaw every service offered his patrons and made them feel as if they were personal guests. Upon their departure, he was there to wish them farewell with “Hope you will return again soon.” McGlade set the standard for hospitality. Other hoteliers followed his example. One such hotel pioneer was Josiah White, who started a resort dynasty.

Josiah White III was the great grand-nephew of Josiah White, a Pennsylvania pioneer who had constructed the Lehigh Canal. The Whites were eager to become involved in new businesses in Pennsylvania, much the same way the Richards family did in southern New Jersey. Josiah White could see that Atlantic City was Philadelphia’s playground and in 1887, he purchased the Luray Hotel, a 90-room boardinghouse on Kentucky Avenue near the beach. He quickly acquired the land between the Luray and the ocean and, with his sons, John and Allen, expanded the Luray into a hotel of more than 300 rooms. White and his sons built stores along the Boardwalk and erected the resort’s first hotel sundeck. The Whites added another first, hot and cold running seawater for those rooms that had private baths.

From the success with the Luray, White and his sons purchased a nearby property used for retreats by the Academy of the Sacred Heart. In 1902, the Whites erected the Marlborough House. A short time later, the Luray was destroyed by fire. Rather than rebuild, White and his sons acquired additional property near the Marlborough and constructed the Blenheim Hotel. It was one of the first fireproof hotels in Atlantic City and the first hotel with a private bath for every room, something unheard of in the hotel industry. Another first of the Blenheim was that it was constructed of reinforced concrete. It was a new process and its inventor, Thomas Edison, was on hand to supervise the construction.

The Whites’ hotels, together with several other large hotels that followed them, created a magical aura along the Boardwalk. They were magnificent sand castles that captured the public’s attention and enhanced Atlantic City’s reputation. The Marlborough, named after the home of the Prince of Wales, was built in the Queen Anne style of architecture. The Blenheim, named after the Blenheim Castle, home of the Duke of Marlborough, was designed in a Spanish-Moorish architecture. While most of Atlantic City’s visitors could never afford to stay at the Marlborough-Blenheim, the Whites’ properties set a tone of elegance adding to the illusion of Atlantic City and its Boardwalk.

Through the leadership of hoteliers such as Benjamin Brown, Charles McGlade, and the Whites, Atlantic City’s hospitality industry gained a reputation as a destination where the vacationer could count on being treated well. They set the standard for the entire hospitality industry, including the smaller hotels and boardinghouses. Regardless of their financial means, upon arrival in Atlantic City, guests knew they would be fussed over. But the pampering of hotel guests—especially before modern conveniences—was labor intensive. The resort’s hotel industry couldn’t function without large numbers of unskilled workers. Cooks, waiters, chambermaids, dishwashers, bellboys, and janitors were in constant demand. These jobs were filled almost entirely by freed slaves and their descendants who had migrated north following the Civil War. These African-Americans were essential to Atlantic City’s surge to prominence as a destination for vacationers. While the money to build a national resort came primarily from Philadelphia and New York investors, the muscle and sweat needed to keep things going was furnished by Black workers, lured north in hope of a better life.

3

A Plantation by the Sea

“Elegant” was a word often used to describe the Windsor Hotel. In the late 1800s, it was one of Atlantic City’s most talked about places. Originally built in 1884 as a small boardinghouse called the Mineola, it was combined with the Berkely Hotel several years later under the name “the Windsor.” The Windsor was a tony place. A small hotel, noted for its service, it had the city’s first French-style courtyard and was a center of social life year-round.

Until the summer of 1893, everyone at the Windsor understood their place in resort society. That June saw the first effort by hotel workers to stage a strike. It failed miserably.

Unhappy with the meal he had been given during break time, a Black waiter in the Windsor’s dining room placed an order with the kitchen for himself. When the White headwaiter learned that the meal was for one of his Black staff, the meal was canceled. The workers were told that if they wanted to eat, they could do so in the Black-only help’s dining area, which was off to one side in the kitchen. At the next dinner break, the food was inedible. The waiters refused their meals and politely advised the headwaiter they would strike if they didn’t receive better food. The headwaiter was unfazed by the threat. He