Atlantic City, NEW JERSEY - Hotel Chalfonte - Boardwalk, Long Dresses, Hats 1913

Description: Atlantic City, NEW JERSEY - Hotel Chalfonte - Boardwalk, Long Dresses, Hats 1913: Elisha and Elizabeth Roberts opened The Chalfonte Hotel, or Chalfonte House as it was first called, on June 25, 1868, near the corner of Pacific and North Carolina Avenues in Atlantic City. The Roberts' choice of this corner was no doubt determined by its proximity to the train depot to the north and the ocean to the south. Because the tides were continually increasing the beach area, the Roberts found it possible to move the hotel forward twice, once in 1879 and again in 1889. They also extended their main building and added subsidiary structures to it. The Chalfonte passed through a period of transition in management during the eighteen nineties and came under the control of Henry W. Leeds around 1900. Leeds embarked on a major expansion program and in 1904 constructed Atlantic City's first tall, iron frame hotel. It is this structure that people usually mean today when they recall staying at the Chalfonte. The original structure, however, was not demolished. As a comparison of the 1903 site plan with the 1904 site plan shows, it was simply moved sixty feet to the west, re-clad in brick, and integrated into the larger hotel complex. Atlantic City is the creation of the second half of the nineteenth century. It was the result of steadily increasing urbanization with its inevitable need for some place where the masses could escape from work and city streets to leisure, romance, and sea breezes. Those with time enough and money could go to Cape May, where well-to-do Philadelphians mingled with their counterparts from southern states. Even the well-to-do, however, may have found the long journey an inconvenience, while those whose work week ended on Saturday afternoon and started again on Monday morning simply had no means of escape from their sweltering row houses. N March 14, 1904, shortly before the new Chalfonte opened, that the roads into Atlantic City were so bad that automobiles were in effect shut out of the island and that a magazine called The Horseless Age was warning its readers to take their vacations elsewhere. This Divided Back Era postcard, mailed in 1913, is in good condition but there is edge wear, and the card has lost its stamp. P. C. D. Co. No. 762. C. T. Line No. A9051.

Price: 8.5 USD

Location: Brooklyn, New York

End Time: 2024-10-29T02:04:05.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD