The Cape May Historic District is an area of ​​380 hectares (1.5 km 2 ) with over 600 buildings in the Cape May resort town of Cape May County, New Jersey. The city claims to be the first seaside resort in America and has many Victorian-style buildings, including the eclectic style, the Stick, and the Shingle, as well as the style of the bungalows. According to National Park Service architectural historian Carolyn Pitts, "Cape May has one of the largest collections of 19th-century skeletal buildings left in the United States... which gives it a homogenous architectural character, a kind of vernacular American vernacular textbook."
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Geography
Cape May City is located on the southern tip of the Cape May Peninsula that divides the Atlantic Ocean from Delaware Bay. Cape May Point, about two miles west of Cape May City, borders the Gulf, while Cape May City is bordered by the Ocean. Cape Island Creek, a tidal and swamp "river", originally divided the city from the rest of Cape May, but its southern tip has long been covered by landfills. The Cape May Canal, built in 1942, now splits Cape May City and Cape May Point from the rest of the peninsula.
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Cape May History
Cape May was first discovered by Europeans by Henry Hudson on August 28, 1609. He landed on the shore of Delaware Bay a few miles north of Cape May Point before returning to the Atlantic Ocean. Cornelius Mey explored the area further in 1621 for the Dutch West India Company and in May 1630 Samuel Godyn and Samuel Blommaert bought land for the Dutch from Native Americans covering four miles south of the Cape. In 1632, the Dutch established a fishing and whaling settlement in the area, but in 1638 the colony of New England had moved. In the 1660s the British mastered and Daniel Coxe, the London Quaker, organized a government in 1687. Early settlers worked in the wood industry, shipyards, whaling, fishing and shellfish. A road along the beach built in 1796 helped establish the Tanjung Mei hamlet.
The early arrival of Cape May as a summer resort is due to the easy transportation with water from Philadelphia to the Atlantic Ocean. The early Cape May travelers were taken to town by small boat from Philadelphia, and water transportation was also easy from New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and pointing south. Southern people then become a big part of the summer tourists. Business resorts in Cape May began to flourish when regular steam traffic on the Delaware River began after the War of 1812, carrying passengers from Philadelphia and New Castle, Delaware. Commodore Stephen Decatur made his summer home at the Atlantic Hotel around this time. The predecessor of the Congress Hall Hotel opened in 1816 by Thomas Hughes. It took its current name in 1828, when Hughes was elected to Congress. In 1830 a visitor wrote it
Cape May Island is a popular and frequent watering spot, the season where it starts around July and continues until mid-August or early September. There are six boarding houses, three of which are very large; the sea baths are comfortable and superb, the beach offers a pleasant ride and there is excellent fishing in the adjacent waters.
Early visitors included Henry Clay in 1847, and possibly Abraham Lincoln in 1849. Serving Presidents visited include Franklin Pierce (1855), James Buchanan (1858), Ulysses Grant (1873), Chester Arthur (1883), and Benjamin Harrison ( 1889). Harrison created the Congress Building as the White House of Summer. From the 1850s to the 1880s up to 3,000 visitors arrived daily during the summer. Newport, Rhode Island, Saratoga Springs, New York and Long Branch, New Jersey are the city's main rivals in the summer resort business, when Cape May's reputation rises and falls with fashion.
During the 1850's the first summer cottage was built and the construction of the major hotels continued. Thomas U. Walter, Capitol Architect, designed the addition to the Columbia Hotel. The Mount Vernon Hotel, designed to be the largest hotel in the world was burned in 1856, however, before it was completed. Competition from Atlantic City appeared in 1854 with the construction of Camden and Atlantic Railroad. Cape May is not connected to Philadelphia by train until the completion of Cape May & amp; Millville Railroad in the mid-1860s.
Architects Stephen Decatur Button began designing buildings in Cape May in 1863 when he overhauled and expanded the Columbia Hotel. Over the next thirty years he designed more than forty buildings in the city. The most famous buildings there include John McCreary House (1869-70), Jackson's Clubhouse (1872), Stockton Cottages (1872), Windsor Hotel (1879) and Atlantic Terrace Houses (1891-92). Plans for George Allen's House are believed to be taken from a pattern book by Samuel Sloan. Architect Frank Furness is believed to have designed the Emlen Physick Estate, but may otherwise visit Cape May just as a tourist. Otherwise, most of the buildings are built and designed by local builders in vernacular style, borrowing from old buildings, pattern books and fashionable architects alike.
Several fires destroyed most towns and homes made mostly of wood, built from the skeleton. The 1878 fire destroyed about half the city, but many buildings were quickly rebuilt. This fire gave a special boost to Button's career, and many local builders seem to have copied the current Button style.
From about 1900-1920 bungalows and larger larger houses were built, especially on Beach Avenue at the eastern end of town. After losing transportation gains with the arrival of trains and cars, Cape May fell out of fashion as a popular resort. Atlantic City became a popular New Jersey beach resort in the 1920s and in the 1950s and 1960s, the car-oriented Wildwood, north of Cape May, became a strong competitor, with its own distinctive architecture.
This district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, and was subsequently listed as the Historic National Historic District in 1976. The NRHP nomination form does not include an inventory of buildings in the district, but refers to about 20 buildings documented by images or photographs by the American Historic Buildings Survey (HABS). HABS now lists about 70 buildings in the district.
Architectural historians George E. Thomas and Carl Doebley listed 100 important buildings in their 1976 book Cape May, Queen of the Seaside Resorts: History and Architecture .
Property that contributed to the selected
The property contribution in the district includes the following. The construction date may be an estimate. Reference Q & amp; D gives reference numbers from the books of George E. Thomas and Carl Doebley with Roman numerals showing more significant buildings, and Arabic numerals are less important buildings. Both lists are listed on the estimated date of construction. References HABS references to the building page in the American Historical Buildings Survey at the Library of Congress.
See also
- List of National Historic Sites Places in Cape May County, New Jersey
- Victorian-style architecture
- Historic District of Wildwoods Shore Resort
References
Source
Dorothy, Jeffery M. (1992). Cape May County, New Jersey: the creation of an American resort community . Rutgers Press University. p.Ã, 355. ISBNÃ, 978-0-8135-1784-1.
External links
- Visit the historic Cape May, accessible 2010-06-28
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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