Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times And Corruption of Atlantic City (6 page)

Rooms in the low-end smaller hotels could be rented for only $1.50 to $2, and that included food. Weekly rates of $8 to $12 were common. While there are no records of the rates charged by boardinghouses, it’s known their rooms were less than the cheapest hotels. As for a precise number of boardinghouses in the resort during its heyday, one can only speculate. There was no obligation for an owner to call his lodging a “boardinghouse” or “hotel.” Many small guesthouses of four to six rooms included “hotel” in their name. To make things more confusing, many establishments used the term “cottage.”

One historian has estimated that boardinghouses accounted for about 60 percent of all businesses renting rooms to tourists. With annual real wages of $1,000 or less for positions such as office clerks, government workers, postal employees, ministers, teachers, and factory workers, boardinghouse rates brought a week at the shore within the means of most visitors. Even the lower classes could afford a week at the shore if they planned ahead and saved for their vacation. Thousands of families did just that, setting aside small sums throughout the year for a week-long fling at the shore. With Atlantic City the only vacation spot to which there was direct rail service in the Northeast, hoteliers who treated their guests well could count on repeat business. And the railroads and resort merchants worked together to keep their working-class patrons coming.

One of the gimmicks used to lure visitors was to continue touting the resort as a health spa, with Pitney’s original promotional efforts evolving into pamphlets distributed by the railroads. Exaggerated claims of the health benefits of Absecon Island’s environment were an important part of selling Atlantic City to both Philadelphia and the nation. After Pitney died, the railroads hired other “distinguished men of medicine” who continued the tradition. These doctors were paid to make written endorsements and to prescribe a stay at the beach as the cure for every ailment. The railroads supplied the doctors with complimentary passes, which were passed on to those patients who had yet to visit the resort. Handouts published at the expense of the railroad distributed this medical advice to the general public and invariably described the resort’s air as “hostile to physical debility.”

There were no limits to the hype. “Next to being an inhabitant of Atlantic City, it must be one’s highest privilege to find rest, health and pleasure at the City by the Sea.” A favorite subject of the railroads’ doctors was ozone, “the stimulating, vitalizing principal of the atmosphere,” which was in large supply only at the seashore, especially Atlantic City. According to the railroads’ pamphlets, “Ozone has a tonic, healing, 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.” But that wasn’t all. By breathing Atlantic City’s air, “It follows naturally that the blood is cleansed and revived, tone is given to the stomach, the liver is excited to healthful action and the whole body feels the benefit. Perfect health is the inevitable result.”

In addition to the pamphlets cranked out by the railroads, there were a series of travelers’ handbooks published from 1887 to 1908 by Alfred M. Heston, a self-appointed cheerleader for the resort. Heston was well-educated and had worked for several newspapers prior to making Atlantic City his home. An owlish, scrawny little man, Heston’s appearance was marked by pince-nez eyeglasses and a closely groomed mustache. Somewhat eccentric, he was drawn to the study of ancient civilizations and progressive Republican politics. Heston was the editor of a local newspaper, the
Atlantic City Review
, and served as city comptroller from 1895 to 1912. His annual handbooks described a life of enchantment waiting for all who came to Atlantic City. They were filled with sketches of charming scenes of vacationers, hotel listings, recommended merchants and restaurants, activities for the family, and romantic little tales all intended to present Atlantic City to the world through rose-colored glasses. According to Heston, “The endless panorama of life upon the water, the strand, and the Boardwalk, constantly in motion and ever changing” made Atlantic City the “queen of watering places.”

Heston used his contacts in the publishing world to have his handbooks reviewed and publicized in major newspapers of the day while the railroad subsidized and circulated them. A traveler waiting for a train in Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago, or in nearly any of the thousands of railroad stations throughout the United States could always find a free copy of the Heston handbook.

As the resort grew in popularity, one of the main themes of its promoters was to dispel the belief that Atlantic City was attractive only in the summer. Not everyone was like Walt Whitman, who found that Atlantic City “suits me just as well, perhaps best, for winter quarters.” Whitman enjoyed riding in a horse-drawn carriage along the beach and in January 1879 wrote to a friend, “I have a fine and bracing drive along the smooth sand (the carriage wheels hardly make a dent in it). The bright sun, the sparkling waves, the foam, the view—the vital vast monotonous sea … were the items of my drive … How the soul dwells on their simplicity, eternity, grimness, absence of art!”

But Whitman’s prose attracted few wintertime visitors, so the railroad’s publicity agents conjured up another law of nature to convince vacationers that Atlantic City had mild winters. Promotional literature claimed that the warm Gulf Stream, coursing its way northward, made a westerly turn just beyond Cape May and swept within a few miles of the stretch of the Jersey coast where Absecon Island was located. The Gulf Stream then, as if guided by an unseen hand, turned out to the sea on its way to the frozen North, thus preventing any other northeastern seacoast town from receiving its warmth. As one early publicist later admitted, “During blizzards or just plain snowstorms, we plastered the metropolitan dailies with
No snow on the Boardwalk
even though sometimes we had to sweep it off before placing the copy.”

The Boardwalk, which began as a way to keep the tourists from tracking beach sand all over town, was another marketing tool for the railroads and local merchants. Without any idea of what they were doing, Jacob Keim, a hotelier, and Alexander Boardman, a train conductor—both of whom were annoyed with the sand brought indoors by their patrons—created a novelty that would in time win hundreds of thousands of new converts for Atlantic City. In the spring of 1870, Keim and Boardman called a meeting of other business people at Keim’s hotel, the Chester County House. Boardman opened the meeting by stating:

Gentlemen, we brought you here to present an idea we feel will benefit everyone in this room. Our visitors are no longer satisfied with the rough facilities once offered them here. Today we must supply fine carpets, good furniture and other luxuries. These cost money. Our carpets and even stuffed chairs are being ruined by the sand tracked into our places from the beach. Walking on the beach is a favorite past time. We can’t stop this. We propose to give the beach strollers a walkway of boards on the sand, which we believe will overcome our sand problems.

Keim and Boardman presented sketches of their idea and a petition to city council was circulated. It was an easy sell. The first Boardwalk was a flimsy structure, eight-foot wide, in 12-foot sections, so it could be taken up and stored at the end of summer. Extending from the Seaview Excursion House to the Absecon Lighthouse, it turned “tiresome areas of mosquito marsh and soft sand” into a crowded little thoroughfare of tourists eager to prance upon every plank. Stretched out across the dunes, filled with people scurrying about, this little promenade must have been a curious sight.

At the time the Boardwalk was originally built, city council adopted an ordinance prohibiting the construction of any buildings within 30 feet of the walkway on the city side, and prohibited construction entirely on the ocean side. By 1880, after the success of the second railroad was evident, local businessmen saw the potential for locating shops along the Boardwalk. Property owners near the walkway pressured council to reverse itself to make retail shops available to the strollers. In less than three years after the ordinance was rescinded, the Boardwalk became a busy street with more than 100 businesses facing the beach. As demand for access to the Boardwalk increased it was improved, becoming more elaborate and permanent. In 1884 it was elevated to get it off the sand and moved closer to the shoreline. In 1896, the city made a major commitment, constructing a Boardwalk that rested upon steel pilings driven into the beach sand. After 1896, the Boardwalk was truly a “grand promenade,” with nothing like it anywhere in the world. By the end of the 19th century, the Boardwalk was a major attraction unto itself, with many visitors coming to the resort for the first time just to walk on it. There was something magical about being so near the sand and water, yet removed from it, that captured the public’s imagination.

The businesses along the Boardwalk helped to foster an emphasis on buying and selling that would pervade the Atlantic City scene for years to come. Every foot of this grand promenade was dedicated to assisting its strollers to part with their money. If the people walking on the Boardwalk weren’t gazing at the ocean, they were certain to be looking at something for sale. The Boardwalk merchants understood their customers and did everything they could to divert their attention from the surf. The industrialization and urbanization of America were, for the first time, creating expendable income for the masses. Atlantic City played a significant role in fostering the illusion that the route to happiness was by way of materialism. The Boardwalk merchants appealed to the impulse to consume and convinced their patrons they couldn’t have a fun time at the shore unless they purchased some of their goodies. Through the commercialization of the Boardwalk, recreational buying came into vogue. The spending of money as a sort of pleasure was introduced to the working class and became part of popular American culture.

More than conveniences for their strollers, the Boardwalk’s shops became a medium of entertainment and a chance to fulfill the American dream, if only temporarily. Hundreds of small stores and kiosk-like structures were constructed in front of the hotels on the city side of the Boardwalk. While there were more refined shops featuring expensive jewelry and furnishings in the hotels, their numbers were few. There were many more stores along the Boardwalk making sales from nickels and dimes selling trinkets. With the grand hotels as a backdrop, these small stores offered visitors, most of whom could never afford a stay in the hotels, the opportunity to purchase gifts and mementos so they could take home a taste of the high life.

There was no limit to the wonderful junk Boardwalk merchants offered for sale: postcards with sexual innuendoes, paintings on shells, tinsel jewelry, handmade Native American moccasins, kewpie dolls, Bohemian cut glass, and an endless inventory of nonsense that the visitor would never buy any place else except when vacationing in Atlantic City. In addition, the Boardwalk merchants pioneered walk-away eateries offering an incredible array of food and beverages. There was everything from deviled crabs, tutti-frutti, saltwater taffy, caramel popcorn, and pretzels to all the “Natural Saratoga Water” you could drink for five cents.

The Boardwalk became Main Street, Fantasy Island. It was a wonderland of glitz and cheap thrills. “The Boardwalk was a stage, upon which there was a temporary suspension of disbelief; behavior that was exaggerated, even ridiculous, in every day life was expected at the resort.” By the beginning of the 20th century, the resort attracted the attention of the
New Baedeker
, a publication for the sophisticated traveler, which remarked, “Atlantic City is an eighth wonder of the world. It is overwhelming in its crudeness—barbaric, hideous, and magnificent. There is something colossal about its vulgarity.”

Atlantic City’s grand promenade created for its strollers an illusion of social mobility that couldn’t be found at other resorts. Elias Howe’s invention of the sewing machine in 1846 laid the foundation for the ready-to-wear clothing industry. Its widespread use in the last half of the 19th century produced a fashion revolution in America. The working class could now afford stylish garments. Ready-made clothing blurred class lines and for many of the resort’s patrons, the Boardwalk became a showcase for their new clothes. A trip to Atlantic City was an excuse for getting dressed up. Strolling on the Boardwalk made visitors feel they were marchers in a grand fashion parade. The working class craved opportunities to participate in festive occasions and the Boardwalk gave them just such a chance. During the summer months, the resort became a huge masquerade party, with everyone trying to appear as if they had arrived socially. At the same time the resort was growing in popularity, American society was groping toward a popular culture to suit the new industrial world. The average worker wanted to be free of the limits imposed by farm life and small villages. Atlantic City was an outlet for that urge. The Boardwalk created the illusion that everyone was part of a huge middle class parading to prosperity and social freedom. There were no class distinctions while strolling the Boardwalk; everyone was someone special.

For visitors to the Boardwalk, the glorification of the common man reached its peak with the rolling chair. The rolling chair was first introduced to the Boardwalk in 1887 by William Hayday, a hardware store merchant, as a part of Atlantic City’s role as a health resort. Invalids could hire a chair and enjoy the pleasures of the view of the surf, the salt air, and the wares for sale in the Boardwalk’s many shops. Harry Shill, a wheelchair manufacturer, was so impressed that he began producing rolling chairs in mass. They quickly evolved from an aid for invalids into a means for transporting every visitor from a working stiff into royalty, even if it was only for a short while. What better way to stroke the ego of the working-class visitor than to wheel him around in a beautifully decorated vehicle, thickly padded with comfortable cushions, and driven by an obliging servant? They couldn’t get that kind of treatment back home, making the Boardwalk something special in their memories.