One of the Oldest Hotels in Cape May, NJ, Carroll Villa, part of preservationist's plan that helped to make a National Landmark City
CAPE MAY, N.J. (PRWEB) May 15, 2018 -- A seaside resort along the Atlantic Ocean in Southern New Jersey owes its popularity, indeed perhaps its very existence, to a determined preservationist and a group of enthusiastic, young architects who arrived in town in the 1970s, ready to save the day - or more importantly, historic structures.
Over the years, centuries actually, Cape May, now a popular resort, has faced its share of perils - fires, storms, Urban Renewal.
The raging inferno of 1878 consumed nearly 40 acres, including sprawling hotels, boarding houses, businesses and cottages. From the ashes of that inferno, Cape May rose, much like the phoenix, this time in grand style. It was the age of Victoria and street after street was soon lined with ornate, fancy summer cottages, as they were referred to, in a variety of architectural styles, for the well-to-do of Philadelphia and surrounding areas, plus hotels and rooming houses for the more ordinary visitors.
On March 5, 1962, no one suspected that two storms, a new moon and spring equinox would converge to create a colossal three-day assault of winds and 25 to 35-foot waves that battered the shoreline, destroying forever the landscape of Beach Avenue and causing $3 million in damage, more than any other storm in Cape May’s history.
Later, in the 1960s, came Urban renewal and bulldozers. Only after several notable structures were demolished did the town move toward a plan to help save historic buildings, eclectic architectural gems that run the gamut from Stick Style to Queen Anne, American Bracketed to Second Empire, Gothic Revival to Victorian Provincial Shingle Style.
So, back to the early ’70s, when a team headed by Carolyn Pitts, a determined preservationist, and a group of architects - some graduates, some students, some interns plus others from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) spent months in Cape May under less than optimal conditions producing pen and ink drawings of this seaside town’s most significant historic structures. Those intricate drawings, dozens of them, sometimes done with a brush only a hair thick, were instrumental in saving “the best-preserved late 19th century resort in America” and enabled Cape May to become a National Historic Landmark in 1976, and a national tourist destination in the years ahead.
One of those buildings, among so many others, was the Carroll Villa on Jackson Street dating to 1882. The American Bracketed Villa style building, a seaside hotel for families, was named for Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Maryland. Architectural features included a flat roof, large cupola and a pillared porch. A new wing and a larger porch were added in the 1890s.
During the renaissance of the resort in the 1970, Harry Kulkowitz purchased the building and renovated it into a small hotel and opened the Mad Batter, one of the first of the town’s gourmet restaurants.
Across town, the Chalfonte Hotel built by Civil War veteran Col. Henry Sawyer has operated continuously since 1876. Another American Bracketed Style building, the Chalfonte has a stellar reputation for Southern charm, hospitality and cooking, perhaps because it’s below the Mason Dixon Line, another interesting tidbit about Cape May.
The first Congress Hall was built in 1816, a huge wooden boarding house that burned to the ground in the Great Fire but was rebuilt within a year, this time of brick in the Second Empire style. United States presidents vacationed at Congress Hall – Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, and Benjamin Harrison who made the hotel his official Summer White House. John Philp Sousa composed the Congress Hall March and with his Marine Corps Band played concerts on the expansive lawn in front of the hotel.
Originally the Colonial Inn when it was built in 1894, The Inn of Cape May is another Second Empire building and one of the most ornate buildings in Cape May, awash in architectural details - octagonal towers with tent roofs and a mansard roof with gabled dormers.
In late April, an exhibit, Capturing Cape May’s Architecture: The Making of a National Historic Landmark, opened at the Carroll Gallery on the grounds of the Emlen Physick Estate. It features the intricate drawings, stories of the architects whose hands created them and how a small band of preservationists saved not only the buildings, “but a culture of the past to create a future for the resort.”
The Physick Estate, 1048 Washington Street, is a Stick-Style Victorian mansion saved in the 1970s and ultimately restored. Today it is a Victorian house museum and the headquarters of the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities. The exhibit features a cross section of buildings - private homes, hotels, bed and breakfast inns, churches and restaurants - and is open daily through Oct. 31. Admission is free. http://www.capemaymac.org; 609-884-5404.
Contact: Kay Busch – (609) 884-5970, ext. 301
Deborah Bass, Write Impressions Communications and Me, +1 (609) 425-0303, [email protected]
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