The Grave and the Gay

“THE GRAVE AND THE GAY”
TWO NINETEENTH CENTURY NEW JERSEY SHORE RESORTS

THE QUESTION: WHY DID ELLA KING ADAMS WANT A RESORT AT FELTVILLE?

Except for a few special posts such as last month, all my posts here starting in July 2023 are about the resort period of the Deserted Village. Piece by piece, I have been working my way through the transformation of Feltville from “the Deserted Village” into a thriving resort called Glenside Park. I have been describing, first, the birth and growth of the resort scene in America, and especially New Jersey, to provide context to the resort which was created at the Deserted Village. I will arrive soon at the profiles of the people who created the resort, some of the people who visited, and life at the resort.

Glenside Park, of course, wasn’t the first resort in the country or even New Jersey. As I have previously mentioned, it was purposefully converted from an ailing mill village by a man named Warren Ackerman, with the help and tasteful design of a friend, Ella King Adams. Adams was relatively well to do, the wife of a prominent Newark lawyer, overseeing a household with several domestic servants. Ackerman offered Adams the chance to bring her family to stay in one of the houses as Ackerman’s guests soon after his purchase. One visit was all it took—Adams asked Ackerman to create a resort—although apparently he had already been thinking of it, and may have had ulterior motives in inviting the tasteful Adams. Adams spent the next five years of her life helping design and perfect the resort.¹

Adams undoubtedly could have saved herself a lot of trouble and time if she had simply chosen to take her family to an existing resort, rather than help create a new one. The northeastern part of the United States, as we have seen in some of my previous posts, had many resorts which might suit an upper middle-class family. If, as I suspect, Adams was looking for a resort close enough to her East Orange home that her husband, a busy lawyer with an office in Newark New Jersey, could have reached on weekends, or perhaps on the occasional evening, New Jersey offered a number of options. Adams rejected them all, in favor of creating a somewhat rustic, self-enclosed, retreat in the Watchung Mountains.

What did Adams reject when she made her momentous decision to help create a resort? This post, the first of two, will give snapshots of some of the New Jersey resorts that Adams rejected, in favor of curating a resort for herself and her friends.

I am looking on these two posts as especially fun, since I get to choose which of the many vacation destinations that New Jersey was riddled with to profile. I am relying heavily on some wonderful contemporaneous accounts of resort life there, which allows me to let someone of the time tell us what the place was like (at least in the eyes of a journalist or a guidebook author, which may carry some intentional bias). This necessarily means that this post will be heavy on quotes. I confess, as a writer, I was tickled by these quotes for various reasons, so you will have to forgive me if I share my favorites.

Beyond just my pleasure in sharing these accounts and thoughts from another century, many of these accounts of vacation life would have been available to Adams. Thus, they might have been part of the context within which she would have been making a decision—whether to visit one of these already well known resorts or create her own. This first post will profile two of New Jersey’s then most popular shore locations, and the next, two inland destinations.

I have selected Long Branch and Atlantic City for this post. You will have read in my past posts about how a combination of canny land investments and transportation advances, particularly railroad development, helped create these shore resorts—and then helped make them New Jersey’s—and to some extent, America’s–most popular shore resorts. Indeed, railroads were, as described in Down the Jersey Shore, “in the catbird seat; with Shore communities knocking down their doors for service, the [railroad] companies could afford to dictate terms.”²

THE ”CAREER” OF LONG BRANCH

We have to start with Long Branch. In the travel guides I discussed in my post on such guides https://feltvillefeatures.com/instruction-for-fashionable-travel/, Long Branch is always mentioned as one of the premier American resorts of the second half of the nineteenth century.

As noted, my chief sources on Long Branch as a resort of this time come from journalists. An additional source for information on the “career” of Long Branch, especially as a popular and fashionable nineteenth century resort, is a book entitled Entertaining a Nation; the Career of Long Branch.³ The book, originally published in 1940, was commissioned by Long Branch itself and is identified as “Written and Illustrated by the Writers’ Project, Works Projects Administration, State of New Jersey.” As noted, the book was published in 1940—interestingly, it refers to “the World War,” since the Second World War had not yet occurred. I love that the Federal Writers’ Project was, according to a writeup accompanying manuscripts in the Library of Congress, an attempt to provide unemployed writers with a way to support themselves other than taking “blue collar jobs on construction projects.”⁴In the late 1930s, apparently whatever monies were still allocated to the program were being funneled through the states, and this book may be an example of a project funded in this manner.

Ella King Adams would have been making her choice of where to summer in the early 1880s but might have read a prominent article published in September 1876 in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine⁵. In that article, then-famous writer and sometime actor Olive Logan chronicles her 1875 visit to Long Branch, from summer to fall. Much of what Logan describes was still accurate some six or seven years later. Logan provides a rather lengthy window into Long Branch as a resort of the time, which I will supplement with material from later newspaper pieces.

Logan begins by proclaiming that Long Branch is “perhaps better in accord with the spirit of American institutions than any other of our watering places.” She goes on to explain:

It is more republican than either Newport of Coney Island, because within its bounds the extremes of our life meet more freely. . . . On hot Sundays there come to Long Branch great throngs of cheap excursionists, small tradesmen and artisans with their families, with a sprinkling of roughs and sharpers . . . Long Branch has equal attractions for rich and poor. It is quite astonishing with what ease the millionaire can get rid of dollars there, and it is almost equally astonishing what chap and comfortable quarters are at the command of the humblest purses. The same magnificent sea view which is put so heavily on the bill of the lodger on the first floor of the big hotels can be enjoyed by the poorer lodger near the roof of the cheaper houses at a comparatively insignificant cost. If there are elegant cottages for Presidents and merchant princes and railway kings, there are also abundant boarding-houses for people who count their pennies carefully before spending them.⁶

She describes the original campaign to popularize the resort:

A scheme of advertising was adopted, brave, expensive, and perilous, by which the place was persistently brought before the public attention summer after summer. The ubiquitous correspondent of the daily press was sent down to report. It was not a very fascinating spot in those early days, but the reporter who can not write an attractive letter merely because there is nothing attractive to write about has mistaken his vocation. . . . There were as charming letters written from Long Branch when it was dull and uninviting as now when it is animated and attractive in the season.⁷

An aside: I appreciate that she recognizes that the aim of a journalist covering a travel destination is to make it seem as charming as possible—although, as you will see, she found plenty still to criticize.

Logan goes on to characterize the successful attraction of President Ulysses S. Grant to the resort as “the coup-d’etat” of the promotion campaign. You may recall that I have already detailed, in a previous post https://feltvillefeatures.com/transportation-helps-make-new-jersey-resorts/ the first visit of President Ulysses S. Grant to the resort, when he arranged to be dropped off with his family, by a Navy steamer, at the resort in 1869. Olive does not mention it, but it was a wealthy publisher, George W. Childs, who persuaded President Grant to make his first visit to Long Branch, during which visit, Childs reported that the President had opined that “he had never seen a place in all his travels which was better suited for a summer residence.”⁸Long Branch investors cemented the deal by offering Grant the use of a three year old cottage in the Elberon section of Long Branch; the cottage became known as “the Summer Capitol” for the twelve years Grant continued his summer visits, cementing the status of Long Branch as the premier resort in the country.

The Elberon section figures again in a future post, and so I will introduce it here. It was one of the most fashionable of Long Branch neighborhoods, the brainchild of Lewis B. Brown, who used his initials and last name in the creation of the area’s name. Prior to Grant’s arrival, he had extended Ocean Avenue from downtown Long Branch into this section of town. When Grant arrived, he found it easy to take his team of horses and engage in the “vigorous riding and driving”⁹of which he was exceedingly fond. It was the summer home of other fashionable personages, including well-known actors and performers, and after 1876, the home of the Elberon Hotel, where President Rutherford Hayes and his family stayed.¹⁰

GAMING AND HORSE RACES

In addition to his liking for exuberant driving, Grant was also fond of gaming, which Entertaining a Nation suggests was another initial draw to bring the president to Long Branch. According to Logan, gaming was available chiefly at Chamberlin’s club-house, which was located within sight of President Grant’s house. Logan describes the establishment’s attractions—and some restrictions—and makes one of many comparisons of Long Branch resort characteristics with those she apparently has visited in Europe:

In the club-house there are tables for roulette, rouge et noir, and other games of chance, and I am told the scene late at night, when the place is thronged with Wall Street men and other skillful skirmishers with the goddess of luck, is a very brilliant one; but unlike the gaming salons [emphasis in original] of Baden-Baden, the gentler sex do not mingle in the scene at Chamberlin’s.¹¹

Entertaining a Nation makes it clear that gaming remained one of Long Branch’s activities through and beyond the 1880s, and describes the ups and downs of several other prominent gambling establishments in Long Branch from the 1860s through the 80s. Interestingly, none of the establishments mentioned are named Chamberlin’s. A man named Colonel John Chamberlain—note the different spelling—apparently started a gambling operation called the Pennsylvania House (Entertaining a Nation does not say in what year). When the gambling establishment failed to produce the great fortune he was hoping for, he started a raceway which he called Monmouth Park, hoping to launch himself into wealth. Entertaining a Nation characterizes him as something of a would-be social climber. Chamberlain ultimately lost his shirt gambling on the horses, and had to sell the Pennsylvania House, to a man named Phil Daly. Over Daly’s tenure at the gambling hall, through his death in the 1890s, his establishment hosted many prominent businessmen, senators, and other politicians.¹² It’s final death only came after anti-gambling laws were passed in 1909.¹³ Entertaining a Nation indicates that both Chamberlain and Daly, who had come to Long Branch from gambling establishments in other parts of the country, politely but firmly excluded local Long Branch residents from the Pennsylvania House.¹⁴

If the “gentler sex” was excluded from at least the elusive Chamberlin’s of Logan’s article, she observed that both sexes might take excursions to the nearby racing ground at Monmouth Park. This racetrack is actually the original site where the predecessor to the (renamed) Kentucky Derby was run, under the name “Jersey Derby.”¹⁵This was the most important race of the time at Monmouth Park, which had a limited schedule. Upon its opening in 1870, there were only five days of racing scheduled and a total of 16 races; by 1880, however, the Park had more than two weeks of racing days.¹⁶

Logan comments that ladies who would never think of gaming at Chamberlin’s think nothing of betting at the racetrack—and not just to bet “such trifles as gloves and bonbons.”¹⁷ She finds it amusing to see “elegantly dressed ladies trundling to the races in a common hotel omnibus—fare, twenty-five cents.” She notes that on race days, there are many “fine turn-outs on the road,” but that at least some millionaires simply bundle their wives and children into an “omnibus”—which was likely a horse-drawn public conveyance—from the hotel to the racetrack, rather than insisting on securing a private carriage ride.¹⁸Worse still, she finds the racetrack attendees to be overly serious:

It is noticeable, too, that the American generally goes to the races in a grave and sedate manner—he might be going to a Methodist camp-meeting so far as hilarity indicates his destination. There is none of that wild chaffing and outlandish prankishness which make the road to the Epsom Derby [a famous race in Surrey, England] one continuous raree-show.¹⁹

THE BEACH AND THE HOTELS

Of course, one of the chief diversions at Long Branch was going to the beach. Ms. Logan singles out the bathing conditions and practices at Long Branch for special criticism.

At the opening of the summer season the shore in front of each hotel at Long Branch is taken possession of by certain men of semi-seafaring appearance, who proceed to set up on the sands, just under the bluff, rows of bathing huts of an architecture so contemptible that even Uncle Tom and Topsy would have turned up their noses at them—shanties, of course, weather-browned boards, unpainted and often even unplaned, rudely nailed together, sides and roof of the same materials, as incapable of keeping out wind and rain as so many paper boxes.²⁰

These semi-seafaring men also rented out “bathing dresses to both men and women,” at half a dollar for each use. Ms. Logan finds the rented costumes unfailingly ugly, and notes that they are often rented still damp from the last user. Since some of the beachgoers are at the beach merely to watch other beachgoers, and ogle their costumes, this ugliness offended Ms. Logan’s sensibilities immensely. She is convinced that more people would engage in bathing at Long Branch—and stay longer at its hotels—if they were presented with more attractive options in bathing dress rentals.²¹

That so many Americans are to be found who are willing to put them on, and walk unflinchingly across the stretch of sand between disrobing hut and surf, under the fire of hundreds of glances from the ladies and gentlemen present, is proof that the bravery of the nation should not be lightly impugned. True they have their reward when the kind ocean covers them with her modest mantle of cool waves. There is no heroism without some guerdon.²²

She apparently thinks that some of the sting of walking across the beach in an ugly, rented costume could be alleviated if Long Branch would adopt the use of “bathing-machines,” such as those used at Brighton in England. These “machines” were really just changing quarters on wheels, which could be dragged down to the water, where the bather inside—or the “softer sex” at least—could disembark straight into the surf, avoiding a long walk which was “a painful ordeal to many ladies, especially those who do not bathe often.”²³

She speaks admiringly of some of the bathing costumes worn by those who bring their own:

Yet once in a while a handsome or a picturesque costume may be observed among them—a tight-fitting blue gilet de laine, with a white star on the breast, or a loose sailor’s shirt and trousers handsomely braided. There was one tall athlete seen on the sands for a few days last summer who wore while bathing the veritable “togs” of a professional gymnast—hauberk and foot-pieces, tights and trunks. He was really a trapeze performer at a variety show somewhere back in the village, I was told, and so was no true part of the fashionable throng; but he helped to make it picturesque, and his departure left a sombre void.²⁴

In addition to renting out shanties and bathing dresses, the “semi-seafaring men” were also the only lifeguards on the beach. Ms. Logan finds this simply appalling, noting that each year, “a life or two is lost at Long Branch” which need not be the case if there were dedicated lifeguards on the beach.²⁵

Another detail of Long Branch life which Ms. Logan singled out for criticism were the hotels, which she called “barn-like frame buildings,” which in her mind, give the town a “cheap and tawdry air—the place is very suggestive of a circus.”²⁶

OTHER DIVERSIONS

After a morning spent bathing, the vacationer could take drives or excursions. The drives can take place at any time, excursions were apparently at set times, with a choice of three destinations, Monmouth Park (already described above), Pleasure Bay, or Ocean Grove. The latter is a nearby town with Methodist camp meetings in the summer. Apparently, the most desirable excursion there was on Sundays, to observe the camp meeting participants. This was also the most difficult day for an excursion to Ocean Grove since the town closed its borders to vehicles on Sundays. To reach Ocean Grove from Long Branch on Sundays, excursionists had to be ferried across an inlet to the one un-barricaded side of the town. Fron there, they could sneak into the throngs of camp meeting participants.²⁷

Pleasure Bay was located along the Shrewsbury River, and offered visitors the chance to gawk at the yachts of the rich, eat at one of the restaurants there, or go out to catch fish or crabs.²⁸ Excursions might include a clam bake, where one can “eat ravenously of a conglomeration of green corn, clams, crabs, potatoes, and yellow-legged chickens that would make Delmonico’s head cook turn green with horror merely to smell of it; taste such a savage mess I am sure he never would—no, not if thumb-screws and red-hot plowshares were the alternative.”²⁹

Evening brought new diversions, in addition to the gaming:

The amusements of the evening at Long Branch are varied; not to speak of such favorite diversions as lovers’ strolls in moonlight or starlight on the beach, there are dancing parties every evening in the parlors of all the large hotels, with occasional concerts dramatic entertainments etc., usually given by amateurs and for some charitable object. Occasionally, too a circus comes along and pitches its tent on the vacant lot near the Ocean Hotel and strange as it may seem to those who know not the ways of the fashionable world, the circus is packed full, not with the Jerseymen from the back village merely, but with the leaders of the monde at Long Branch. The favorite night for dancing is Saturday; custom has made this the most brilliant night in the week in the parlors of the hotels; more people arrive on /Saturday than on any other day, and in the height of the season on a Saturday night the piazzas will be so thronged that it is almost impossible to move about, thousands of men and women in gala attire sitting by the open windows to listen to the music and see the dancers.³⁰

Logan notes that those thronging the piazzas to simply listen to the music are spared the “hot-work” of summer dancing, and suggests that the “sterner sex” only engage in this “hot work” to please the “fair” sex.³¹

After the dancing, visitors might make up parties to go and “serenade” President Grant, or “some other person of consequence, or lady of social popularity.”³² It was apparently well known that President Grant found attendance at dancing parties to be excruciating, and dreaded the ones given in his honor, which naturally required his presence.

Ms. Logan was, in addition to being a writer, a sometime actor. She spends special attention on the diversions of some individuals with cottages near that of President Grant, specifically “members of the theatrical profession.”³³

The players rather favor a quieter mode of life in summer than that which is popular with the majority of visitors to Long Branch. They like to be near it, but they are seldom of it. Their time is passed in home hospitalities, in the entertainment of their friends, in reading the long summer hours away on their piazzas or lolling in tree-swing hammocks, and in driving around the country in cozy family carriages, rather than in the feverish atmosphere of fashionable ball-rooms, the daily gambol in the surf, or the exciting delights of the gaming table.

Logan takes special care to describe the Long Branch home of then-famous actress Maggie Mitchell, most famous as “The Cricket.” Mitchell counts among her collection of books one of the only three copies of Boydell’s 1793 edition of Shakespeare. Clearly, Logan is crowing a bit at being among those familiar with the interior of Mitchell’s cottage.

LONG BRANCH CONTINUES ITS SUCCESS

A Monmouth Inquirer article from 1882 indicates that Maggie Mitchell was still vacationing at Long Branch some seven years later—but she may have left off visiting so sedately as described by Logan:

Maggie Mitchell (Mrs. H. T. Paddock) is at her country home at Long Branch. Her house was built by J. H. McVicker, the theatrical manager, and is about half a mile west of the Elberon Hotel. Among the theatrical persons who make Long Branch their Summer [sic] home, Mrs. Paddock is noted for her bright conversation and exuberant spirits. She drives a team of black ponies with a firm hand, and braves the terrors of the surf in a startling style.³⁴

Logan’s article, with its charming details, describes Long Branch some 7 or 8 years before Adams would have been making her choices about a summer destination. At the end of his presidency, Grant planned (and took) a round-the-world tour, which kept him away from Long Branch for several summers.³⁵ But Long Branch’s fame as a resort continued—those with financial interests in the success of Long Branch were mightily relieved when Grant’s successor, Rutherford B. Hayes, arrived for summer vacation the first summer Grant was absent. Unlike Grant, Hayes did not take a cottage of his own, but stayed at the newest, most fashionable hotel, the Elberon Hotel, which had been built the year before, in the style of a country estate.³⁶ Olive Logan would clearly have approved of this more stylish, hotel than those she observed and of the changes made to another hotel 1n 1873, renamed the West End, from its original name of the Stetson House, when its owners expanded it and made it less barnlike.³⁷ The West End, as improved, is described in Entertaining a Nation:

The grounds were arranged as an extensive park with many adjoining buildings, including a summer auditorium. The management provided stables for one hundred and fifty horses and showed its recognition of the importance of horseflesh in Long Branch by advertising its stage and stable supervisors among its executives. In 1880 the West End was the first hotel to set up direct telegraphic service with the New York Stock Exchange.³⁸

GETTING TO LONG BRANCH

It is easy to imagine that Ella King Adams, wife of the prominent lawyer Frederic Adams, might well have been more easily lured by one of these stylish hotels than the original barn like ones Logan described in her article. So perhaps Long Branch might have been a place she considered for a vacation. But how would Adams and her family get there? This has been a little difficult to disentangle. By the early 1880s, when Adams would have been making this choice, it appears that she could take a train from one of several stops in or near East Orange, where she was living, into Newark. It also appears, looking at maps found in Gustav Kobbé’s two guidebooks, The Central Railroad of New Jersey and The New Jersey Coast and Pines, that the Central Railroad had trains running from Newark to Long Branch. But the railroad station which connected to the line serving Long Branch, today’s Penn Station, was about a mile and a half away from the one where Adams’ East Orange train would have taken her. She would have needed to have a carriage take her from one to the other; alternatively, of course, she could ride by carriage from her home to the appropriate Newark station. It still would have been a trip of over an hour to Long Branch from Newark.

I still have some uncertainty about this, since a front-page suite of articles about a train accident taking vacationers northward and home from Long Branch describe an express route from Long Branch to Jersey City.³⁹ If Adams had to get to Jersey City from her home in East Orange, that would make travel to Long Branch more complicated. The answer will await further research.

COMING INTO ATLANTIC CITY

Moving down the coast, to another prominent shore location, albeit one that would have required even more time and effort on Adams’ part to reach, we arrive at Atlantic City. Many of the activities available there were, of course, similar to those at Long Branch. We are fortunate to have some description of life at this resort from another article commissioned by Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1877. Author William Rideing, along with an illustrator working with him, worked his way down the length of the Jersey shore. Faced with a choice of resorts to visit, Mr. Rideing passed Long Branch and others by, but spent some time—perhaps a day or two—in Atlantic City. His article is useful partly because he gives us the following details on how he went about reaching Atlantic City from the northern part of the state:

We were on the extremity of Sandy Hook, that narrow peninsula which stretches into the ocean like a hand of greeting and farewell to the vessels that pass into and out of New York Harbor through the deep-water ship channel which it borders and our stand-point was the tower of the United States Signal Service Station.

We trod back to the steamboat landing along the narrow, much indentured edge of beach, upon which large numbers of horseshoe crabs had stranded, and thence we went southward in a train, most of whose passengers were city people returning from business to their summer homes at Long Branch. That fashionable resort had no inducements strong enough to detain us, who were in search of the picturesque, and we continued in the cars to Whiting’s, some thirty-six miles farther down the coast where we transferred ourselves from the New Jersey Southern to the Tuckerton Railway, by which we arrived at West Creek.

…We passed out from the mouth of the sinuous creek into Little Egg Harbor Bay, separating the outer beach from the main-land, and sailed across to Beach Haven, the newest of watering-places, where we proposed to spend the night. …The landing at Beach Haven is inviting, but its promise is not fulfilled by a more intimate acquaintance with what is called “the only practical sea-side resort in America.” … We went southward to Atlantic /city, the popular watering-place of Philadelphia, with whose homes it is connected by two steam railways, the distance being about fifty-four and a half miles.⁴⁰

As this passage and a past post have indicated, Atlantic City was most popular with Philadelphia residents, for whom not one, but two railroad lines had been completed by this time across the state of New Jersey. Indeed, as Tatyana Reseter points out in her thesis, Atlantic City was close enough (54 miles by train) to Philadelphia to accommodate “excursionists”—people who had only money or time enough for a day of leisure.⁴¹ Logan had noted the weekend arrivals of excursionists as well. Many of these individuals were not wealthy enough to own a carriage or horse, so the train, which the railroad constantly tried to make faster, was their means of travel.

You may have noticed that Rideing’s trip description involves taking to the water for the last part of his journey to Atlantic City, so it is possible that Ella King Adams would have found travel there from East Orange daunting in the early 1880s. By 1889, at least, when Gustav Kobbé published his book, The New Jersey Coast and Pines, he noted that Atlantic City, “virtually a seaside suburb of Philadelphia . . . has been growing more popular among New Yorkers since the Central Railroad of New Jersey put on its fast express,”⁴² So there would have been train service from the north as well as Atlantic City, at least by 1889.

Rideing describes coming into Atlantic City:

Seen from the ocean, it is quite captivating, the striped tower of the Absecon Light rising to a stately height from a low belt of foliage, and only the handsome turrets of the leading hotels being visible. But the beauty vanishes on closer acquaintance, and we find a hot noisy flat covered with buildings and devices for the entertainment and recreation of multitudinous excursionists. The streets are wide, straight, and well paved. A praiseworthy effort has been made to line them with trees, but the desert-like heat and aridity coat the leaves with yellow early in the season. The hotels, saloons, restaurants, and boarding cottages of all sizes are innumerable; and along the beach, which is semicircular, there are photograph galleries, peep-shows, marionette theatres, conjuring booths, circuses, machines for trying the weight, lungs, or muscles of the inquisitive, swings, merry-go-rounds, and all the various side shows which reap the penny harvest of holiday crowds.⁴³

WHAT LONG BRANCH DID NOT HAVE

Ms. Logan’s article had railed about the safety of the beaches. At Atlantic City, according to Rideing:

Admirable precautions are taken for the safety of bathers. Some men with life-saving apparatus at their control are stationed in a tower from which they can observe the movements of the people in the water; and boatsmen, whose duty is to avert cases of drowning, paddle watchfully along the outer line of surf.⁴⁴

There is even a boardwalk, which, if it existed, was not noted by Ms. Logan to be at Long Branch.

A plank-walk extends along the beach; and there are many other things that commend Atlantic City to us, and place it above the resorts of excursionists near the metropolis.⁴⁵

In speaking of other resorts, Rideing is probably referring to Rockaway Beach and Coney Island in New York, to which he has already made some comparisons, not Long Branch, which he studiously avoided visiting.

Heston’s Guide: Atlantic City Illustrated notes that Atlantic City was the first location to build a boardwalk in 1870. By the time of the 1887 Heston publication, it reported that a dozen other seaside resorts had copied Atlantic City’s example and built their own boardwalks.⁴⁶

ATLANTIC CITY AS HEALTH INDUCING

In her 2011 Master’s Thesis, Tatyana Reseter sees Atlantic City’s growing popularity in the late nineteenth century as tied in part, to some “natural, physical qualities of the seaside town.”⁴⁷ For one thing, it is built on an island, which allowed visitors to enjoy breezes from every side. She notes that scientific and medical tests in the 1870s and 1880s were done to demonstrate the health inducing properties of the air.⁴⁸ Corroborating this, the 1887 issue of Heston’s Guide: Atlantic City Illustrated singles out two components of the air, which the guide asserts induce better health:

Several elements combine to produce the tonic effect of the sea-air, the fist of which is the presence of a large amount of ozone—the stimulating, vitalizing principle of the atmosphere. Ozone has a tonic, healing, and purifying power, that increases as the air is taken into the lungs. It strengthens the respiratory organs, and in stimulating them helps the whole system. It follows naturally that the blood is cleansed and revivified, tone is give to the stomach, the liver is excited to healthful action, and the whole body feels the benefit. . . . Another reason is that the atmosphere, being denser at the sea-level than at more elevated points, contains, in a given space, a larger amount of oxygen; while still another is that, as a larger portion of the breeze comes from the sea, the air contains but a small amount of the deleterious products of decaying vegetable and animal matter.

The saline particles held in suspension in the atmosphere, the “dust of the ocean,” enter the system through the lungs, and aid in the tonic effect experienced at the seashore.⁴⁹

Apparently, Atlantic City also has less rainfall than many coastal resorts, leading to lower humidity, which is more comfortable, and deemed more healthful. Reseter says that reports like these made Atlantic City grow as a winter resort as well as summer one, although the same breezes from all directions which made the resort so pleasant in the summer made winter there particularly cold.⁵⁰

Air and seawater were not the only things that made Atlantic City healthful—by 1887, at least, according to Heston, it had a “perfect system of sanitation.”⁵¹ The guide goes on to give details:

With the continued growth of Atlantic City and the introduction of extensive water works, underground sewerage became a necessity. Years previously numerous conduits had been provided for carrying off the surface-water, while the raising of the level of the streets and adjacent properties, and compulsory filling of low lots, had further improved the surface-drainage. The one thing needful remaining was to make better provision for disposing of laundry water, kitchen slops, and human excreta. . . . Briefly stated, this system comprises a pumping-station and reservoir with deeply laid sewers converging to it, and filter-beds situated at a considerable distance from the well, out on the salt-meadows.⁵²

Additionally, Heston’s guide promotes leisure as health inducing, specifically referring to the “rest cure:”

Overtaxed brains are ordered hither by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, the man who has the honor of having discovered the “rest cure.” He and his learned cogeners have found that many chronic diseases result from nervous exhaustion. The sufferer from incipient paralysis or brain-softening is ordered to Atlantic City for six months, and in many instances returns to his home cured.⁵³

A historical aside here—I looked up Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and the first thing that popped up was an American Psychological Association article that cast quite a bit of doubt on Mitchell’s “rest cure.” The APA suggest that men were being directed towards a trip to the West, where the afflicted man could engage in strenuous activities, with no mention of Atlantic City. So Heston’s guide may be a bit of a stretch, at least when it comes to cures ordered by Mitchell. For women, however, the “rest cure” included forced bed rest, seclusion, a meat-rich diet and possibly electrotherapy.⁵⁴ Apparently, the “rest cure” was for a person diagnosed with “neurasthenia,” a condition coined by American neurologist George Beard in 1869. Symptoms included depression, insomnia, anxiety, and headaches—and the condition was taken to be a proof of “American cultural superiority,” a byproduct of a “highly evolved brain and nervous system.”

THE BEACH AND OTHER ATTRACTIONS

Of course, there was the beach, where one may bathe or just observe.

Many delightful, dreamy hours may be spent upon the strand when the weather is pleasant. The long stretch of sandy beach and the roar of the surf may be uninteresting to some upon a gloomy day, but when the sun is shining all dreariness disappears, the ocean sparkles like a huge diamond, and groups of people wander along the strand or scoop out convenient hollows in which they will lie for hours, enjoying the warm sun-bath and inhaling ozone at every breath Bevies of girls dressed in dainty costumes are scattered about on the sand, and ripples of laugher come to one’s ears. . . . From morning until evening the beach is a perfect paradise for children. The youngsters take to digging in the sand and paddling in the water by natural instinct, having unlimited opportunities for both.⁵⁵

Interestingly, Logan never once mentioned children on the beach, perhaps because she was so caught up in the ugly rented bathing costumes—and our unknown author here has taken care to inform us that the “girls” will be wearing “dainty” costumes. Bathing costumes—perhaps dainty, and otherwise—are available for rental in Atlantic City, as well, as is described in the section on bathing rates:

Bathing Rates, Etc.

Hot sea-water baths, fifty cents, three tickets for one dollar; surf baths, with bathing suits, twenty-five cents; surf baths with your own bathing suit, fifty cents per week.⁵⁶

Other attractions listed in Heston’s guidebook include wandering around three piers built out into the ocean, and drives to various nearby locations, including a lighthouse. There were opportunities to sail, and to fish, and of course to eat fish and other seafood such as oysters—“The most delicious oysters are to be had here, fresh from their native beds, and with an appetizing flavor unknown to one who has never eaten them before the moss of their shells is dry.”⁵⁷ Those who didn’t fancy sailing, could take a steamer, or just sit by the shore and watch the “fleet of gayly [sic] decked boats as they dance in the dim distance with their precious freight.”⁵⁸

There were numerous venues such as Albrecht’s Garden for “interesting entertainments,” including musical attractions, . . . select concerts and operatic entertainments.” The Heston guidebook assured readers that “the garden is managed with a strict regard for propriety.”⁵⁹ During the height of the season, there were “hops,” i.e. dances, most every night at many of the hotels.

And, after 1881, five miles away at Margate, there was the structure which today is known as Lucy the Elephant. The report of its construction was momentous enough to be carried in newspapers large and small across the country, including those in small towns such as Snow Hill, Maryland, where, in the Democratic Messinger, on page 4, it was reported:

A White Elephant has been built at Atlantic City. The idea, of course, is to draw excursionists by means of the novelty. The structure is eighty-six feet long and sixty-five feet height. Stairways inside the legs lead up to a big restaurant and other rooms in the body, while on the back is a car forming a good place of outlook. The exterior is painted and sanded so as to resemble an elephant’s skin, except for the windows. The cost was $20,000.⁶⁰

RESORTS FOR EVERYONE

Logan was effusive about the fact that Long Branch offered its attractions somewhat equally to visitors from various affluence levels, and attracts weekend excursionists. Reseter suggests that this was even more pronounced in Atlantic City, which she characterizes as “a simple family resort town that could entice all sorts of people.”⁶¹ Atlantic City even has two hotels which apparently cater specifically to excursionists.

At the lower end of the city there are two hotels, which are specially designed for excursionists—that is, persons who come down to spend a day at the seashore. This class aggregates many thousands. The houses are provided with well-appointed restaurants, pleasant parlors, broad piazzas, and spacious ball-rooms. Such is the popularity of Atlantic City that the excursion houses are often engaged in advance of the season by parties who know and prefer this resort above any other within reach.⁶²

Heston’s guide is especially taken with the egalitarian spirit of Atlantic City. I will close with Heston’s observations and his prediction for the future:

Coming from ever part of the land and from every walk in life, the crowd must necessarily be a motley one, but there is none of that “respect of persons” which is sometimes seen in the churches. The man with a “gold ring, in goodly apparel,” is not considered one whit better than the “poor man in vile raiment;” indeed, appearances are so deceptive that it would never be safe to judge o the size of a man’s bank account by the clothes he has on—especially if it be a bathing suit. Men whose talents have made them famous throughout the land—judges, lawyers, and ministers—arrayed in a suit of blue and white, mingle daily with the other bathers, ignorant of who they are and regardless of their social standing. It is no uncommon sight to see men eminent in their callings busily engaged in scooping up bucketsful of sand for children whom they chance to meet upon the beach, or aiding hem in their search for shells after a receding tide. Sedate bachelors and prudish old maids not infrequently take part in such diversions as these, and, viewing the scenes from the calm of a pavilion, one cannot help thinking that the intellects and the characters thus unbent, and finding a share in the enjoyments of childhood, appear to greater advantage by the relaxation. Year after year, summer after summer, this strange commingling of the young and the old, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, goes on in Atlantic City; and so until the end of time, generation after generation, the charmed voice of the sea will draw men to the sands and to its surf. From the plains of the South from the wide expanse of the West, and from the bleak, gray rim of the North, men, women and children will come and go, girdling our coast with joy and sorrow through the twelve months—months which make possible the winter’s comfort and the summer’s pleasure.⁶³