Atlantic City

Called the "City by the Sea," the "Queen of Resorts," or "The World's Favorite Playground," Atlantic City, New Jersey, was the most celebrated family entertainment resort in the United States from the 1880s until World War II. Theodore Roosevelt once claimed that "A man would not be a good American citizen if he did not know of Atlantic City." After falling into decline for almost thirty years, since 1978 Atlantic City has become a center for legalized casino gambling and is once again one of America's most popular destinations, with over 37 million visitors in 1997. Famous for its Boardwalk, amusement piers, and street names, which were the basis of the original Monopoly board game, Atlantic City is also an important convention center and the home of the Miss America Pageant, which has been held there since its origin in 1921 and continues to be one of the most popular television spectaculars.

Located on Absecon Island along the New Jersey seashore, sixty miles southeast of Philadelphia, Atlantic City's development started in 1852 when civil engineer Richard Osborne and prominent local physician Dr. Jonathan Pitney persuaded some investors to bring the railroad to the island, thus forming the Camden-Atlantic Railroad Company. The first train to Atlantic City arrived on July 1, 1854, after a two-and-a-half-hour trip from Camden. Subsequently, flows of tourists followed, and the national aspirations already present in the street nomenclature established by Samuel Richards began to become reality. After the Civil War, the popularity of the wide avenues parallel to the ocean, named after the world's great bodies of water, and the perpendicular streets running east to west and named after the States, expanded and gained international fame, drawing guests from all over the world.

Between 1875 and 1910, Atlantic City boomed. Growing from around 250 inhabitants in 1855 and 2,000 in 1875, the population reached 27,000 residents by the census of 1900 and almost 50,000 in 1910. With inexpensive train access and, within a couple of years, a declining travelling time to Philadelphia from 90 to 50 minutes, daily round trips became very attractive to lower-middle-class urban dwellers. Consequently, hordes of transient visitors flocked to the resort, especially on sunny Sundays. As Atlantic City grew, massive and grandiose hotels like the United States, the Traymore, the glamorous Shellburne, or the fantastic Marlborough-Blenheim, as well as smaller boardinghouses sprang up all over the city. Atlantic City's hotels not only met the demand for accommodations, but they also provided popular entertainment such as dances, concerts, billiards, and roller-skating. By 1888, Atlantic City counted over five hundreds hotels and boardinghouses. They constituted the heart of the town.

In 1870, in order to allow tourists to enjoy walking along the ocean without the inconvenience of rugged nature, the City Council—encouraged by the railroad companies—built the nation's first boardwalk, an 8 foot wide wood structure, which, over the years, would become "the" place to be seen and the social and economic spine of the town. Enlarged successively to 14, 20, and 24 feet in 1880, 1884, and 1890, respectively, the fifth boardwalk of 1896 was a 40-foot wide steel-framed wooden esplanade extending about four miles long, packed with hotels, restaurants, and shops offering souvenirs, photographic portraits, refreshments, and saltwater taffy—a candy that was invented here in 1883. Tourists quickly discovered the pleasure of engaging in recreational shopping, a new phenomenon that would become an institutionalized feature of American culture.

The Boardwalk was an open stage upon which strollers could participate in a permanent great show. As its popularity increased, Colonel George W. Howard constructed the world's first ocean amusement pier in 1882, a 650-foot long structure located off the boardwalk, into the Atlantic Ocean. In the following years, many developers and advertisers re-used his brilliant idea and amusement piers started to spring up along the boardwalk. Some of the most well known and successful ones were Ocean Pier (1891), Steel Pier (1898) named also "The Show Place of the Nation," Million Dollar Pier (1906), Steeplechase Pier (1908) and the Garden Pier (1912). They provided plenty of varied attractions and almost continuous entertainment from band concerts, light operas and musicals, dance contests, vaudeville shows, spectacles led by performers like W.C. Fields, Frank Sinatra, or the escape artist Harry Houdini, to the high-diving horse at Steel Pier, the inauguration of the Miss America Pageant, Dr. Couney's premature infant exhibit, merry-go-rounds, Ferris wheels, roller coasters, sand "sculptures," and other amusements in endless variety to please everyone's taste.

In this pre-Disneyland era, Atlantic City had converted itself into an urban amusement park for visitors, a glamorous fairyland of grandiose display, and a kingdom of flashy architecture and perpetual pleasure. Atlantic City was a cultural symbol. A product of the lower-middle-class urban masses that constituted the largest part of its patrons and sources of revenues, the city reflected their tastes and aspirations. For many of its visitors, Atlantic City was a dream that had come true, a city from the tales of the Arabian nights, heaven on earth, or the eighth wonder of the world—all this despite its omnipresent commercial atmosphere, aggressive advertising campaigns, and strong emphasis on financial profits.

Until World War II, Atlantic City's future seemed bright, but the post-war development of commercial air travel ended its heyday. As tourists from the Northeast United States increasingly flew to Florida and the Caribbean for their vacation, the city declined and became a decaying shadow of its former self. The city's population fell from 64,000 in 1940 to 37,000 in 1990. In 1989, the median income of the city was $12,017 compared with a New Jersey statewide median of $18,870. With the passage of the casino gambling referendum in 1976 and since the opening of the first casino in May 1978, Atlantic City has struggled to revive its economy and undergo a renewal and a revitalization process. Twenty years later, the city boasts thirteen casinos offering 24-hour non-stop action and is now recognized worldwide as a gaming mecca. Nevertheless, even though the Board-walk and the waterfront have been restored and made prosperous, many neighborhoods of Atlantic City continue to suffer from urban blight and the role of gambling in urban revitalization is still being debated.

—Catherine C. Galley

—Briavel Holcomb

Further Reading:

Funnel, Charles E. By the Beautiful Sea: The Rise and High Times of that Great American Resort, Atlantic City. New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 1983.

Lencek, Lena, and Gideon Bosker. The Beach: The History of Paradise on Earth. Harmondsworth, Viking Penguin, 1998.

Mahon, Gigi. The Company that Bought the Boardwalk: A Reporter's Story of How Resorts International Came to Atlantic City. New York, Random House, 1980.

McMahon, William H. So Young—So Gay! Story of the Boardwalk, 1870-1970. Atlantic City, New Jersey, Atlantic City Press, 1970.

Sternlieb, George, and James W. Hughes. The Atlantic City Gamble. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1983.

Teski, Marea, et al. A City Revitalized: The Elderly Lose at Monopoly. London, University Press of America, 1983.