The most important of the early buildings, the railroad station, became the city’s financial pipeline. Within a few years, the land was cleared and a hotel and several dozen houses were built. When they actually got there, they didn’t find much beyond a handful of families and a thicket of briars and bushes. They landed sixty-two miles away on a spot on the northern end of Absecon Island, which became Atlantic City.

Looking to capitalize on the emerging and profitable tourist trade, in 1854 a pair of Philadelphia developers pulled out a map and drew a straight line between the city and the shore. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century beach resorts like Cape May, New Jersey, and Newport, Rhode Island, steadily grew, catering to the affluent. Geography brought Atlantic City into existence. This view of Atlantic City from 1885 features the Absecon Island Lighthouse, the third tallest lighthouse in the United States. As the cultural tastes and social attitudes of the shop owners, professionals, and small-business people who visited the area changed, the city changed in response with lasting effects to its vitality and viability. From its founding in the 1850s through the early decades of the twenty-first century, Atlantic City succeeded and failed based on its ability to make itself in the image of the American middle class. Groff for T he Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia)īefore Disneyland, Atlantic City was the first great middle-class resort in the nation, especially the Philadelphia region. Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You BackĮssay The Atlantic City Boardwalk, introduced in 1870, became the city’s signature attraction.

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