(Note The following condensed history has been prepared by Joe Jordan for this website. It is based on selected excerpts from Part 1: The
Early Years 1875 – 1900 of his book on Cape May Point’s history. This large illustrated book, in four parts, is scheduled for publication in 2003)
Copyright 2002 by Joe J. Jordan
Today, it’s hard to imagine the wild place that Cape May Point was in 1875, the year it was founded by Philadelphia textile merchant Alexander
Whilldin. At that time it wasn’t called Cape May Point, or even Sea Grove – it was an uninhabited backwoods known as Stites Beach or Barren Beach. The local newspaper, Star of the Cape,
called it “…a desert wilderness of trees, brush, brambles and sand.” and “a dense growth of timber, woody copse and briar tangles, with a sea front of sand
hills and inhabited by rabbits and other wild game.” Such was the dubious site that Alexander Whilldin decided to develop as a new seaside resort. He would
name it “Sea Grove.”
Whilldin was a religious man, a deeply committed Presbyterian. Though born in Philadelphia, he grew up near Cape May Court House, but at the age of
sixteen returned to Philadelphia to pursue a life in commerce. It became a very successful life.
For fifty years he had been summering in Cape May, but the gambling, drinking and dissipation that was all too common in that resort town, repulsed
him. Whilldin dreamt about a different kind of place – a place that would become a moral and religious seaside home.
Fortunately Alexander Whilldin had the means to fulfill his dream. He owned all the land that was to become Sea Grove! His wife of almost forty years was a Stites and the property had been in her family since 1712. Now nearing seventy, Whilldin decided to act. He took the first decisive step by petitioning the
New Jersey legislature for a charter of incorporation under the name of the Sea Grove Association. Then, Alexander Whilldin, John Wanamaker, and several others,
set out to develop a truly Christian resort.
By January, 1875 James C. Sidney, an English born architect from Philadelphia, had almost completed the drawings
for his remarkable town plan, with its Pavilion Circle marking the town center. From this hub the broad avenues of Cape, Ocean and Central radiated out to the ocean and
bay, exactly as we find them today.
Eighty-hour workweeks and hundreds of immigrant laborers, camped out in tents and shacks, succeeded in creating a new resort community in time for the
official opening in June 1875. Wanamaker and Whilldin built their imposing villas on the beachfront and about two dozen smaller cottages opened for the first summer
season.
Also completed that first year were two key structures designed by Sidney, a 100-room hotel at the foot of Cape Avenue, the Sea Grove House, and
the first chapel, the Pavilion, which could seat (but certainly never did) a congregation of 1500.
Buoyed by the apparent success of its first season, key members of the Sea Grove Association added two more hotels, the 90 room Cape House
across Cape Avenue from the Sea Grove House, and the 76 room Centennial House at the corner of Cape and Pearl (where the “Gray Ghost” now stands)
These first few years saw many improvements - large stables at the corner of Yale and Lake, greenhouses at Cambridge and Lake, the school house on the
north side of Cambridge (now a private residence) and the signal tower on the beachfront between Cape and Central.
To ensure the spiritual purity of the community, the Association encouraged the ministry to settle in by offering them free lots if they would build
within a year. The response was gratifying – Presbyterian clergy built ten percent of the first cottages and Sea Grove’s religious foundation seemed secure.
Land speculation was discouraged by a stipulation in all leases that the buyer must build a cottage within three years time. Temperance was assured by
a clause forbidding the sale of any alcoholic beverage. In spite of such restrictions the town was growing. Stores opened to sell meats and groceries. There was a fish
market; there were ice cream parlors, cigar stores, a pharmacy and even a shoe store.
In 1878, just three years into its infancy, Sea Grove had its first problem. It was with the Government of the United States. The feds determined that
its post office that had been operating since March of 1876 wasn’t kosher. After all, the Sea Grove Association was not a government body; it was a private
enterprise, operating rather independently within the Township of Lower.
Facing up to this predicament, the Association successfully petitioned the State Legislature to incorporate as a borough, independent of Lower
Township. The taxpayers approved this in an April referendum. Next problem – the Postal Service objected to the name Sea Grove. Some say they thought Sea Grove’s mail would get mixed with Ocean Grove’s, since the names were so similar. Cape May Point (a name certainly not to be confused with Cape May City?) was chosen and approved.
The pace of lot sales, after the first few years, was getting slower and slower. Sufficient revenues were not coming in from land sales and taxes to
cover the heavy costs of the initial improvements and the annual maintenance. By 1880 the Cape May Wave newspaper observed, “As a seaside resort
conducted on puritanical principals…Cape May Point has reached the end of its string”
In April 1881 the Sea Grove Association abandoned its dream and auctioned off its entire holdings. Everything was for sale: 481 (out of the 981total)
building lots, the three hotels with their bath houses, the pavilion and its park, the livery stables, Lake Lily with its boats and boat house, and even the bathing
beaches. The Association was dissolved and Sea Grove was no more.
The April auction was painful – except for the speculators. The Sea Grove Association relinquished its moral
influence, withdrew its restrictions, and came away with 25 cents for every dollar it had invested. The grandiose pavilion, symbol of this would-be Christian resort,
fetched $400 – for its timber! The market was open for land speculation.
The consummate player here was Dr. J. Newton Walker, a Philadelphia physician. Previously, in 1877, he had bought 30 lots from the Sea Grove
Association. No one else had acquired so much property there. He didn’t bid at the auction, but six months later he acquired another 98 in a private purchase.
Early on he had built the five-cottage “Walker Row” (often called the five sisters) across from the Sea Grove House on Lincoln Avenue. The drug
store and seawater bath complex beside the hotel were his. He had sought his fortune in Sea Grove. So had others. All were let down. The timing was wrong. Cape May
Point would ultimately enter a long deep sleep – through most of the 20th century!
The first of the three disastrous fires that have threatened to consume Cape May Point came in 1886. Well past midnight, on a cold Saturday in
November, flames were seen pouring out the upper windows of the Bellevue Hotel (the renamed Centennial House) at the corner of Cape and Pearl. Fortunately
it was closed for the season but unfortunately so was most of Cape May Point.
The Point had no fire apparatus and no fire department - only a quickly organized bucket brigade to try to control the spreading conflagration. Strong
offshore winds soon turned the blaze into a firestorm. By the time the Cape May Volunteer Fire Company’s horse-drawn pumper was racing down Cape Avenue the
townspeople were already in a panic. Neighboring residents pulled out what furniture and mementos they could gather as blazing embers flew wind-borne to their wood
shingled roofs.
Their panic was justified. The whole town was threatened. Heavy hose had to be strung all the way to Lake Lily for an adequate water supply. Hours
passed before the fire was finally brought under control. It had spread across three streets – Cape Pearl and Yale – taking out house after house. The final tally:
one hotel, nine cottages and three stores.
The magnificent Harrison Cottage, built in 1890 on the beachfront between Whilldin and Lehigh, was a gift to President Benjamin Harrison’s
wife from a syndicate led by John Wanamaker. The President had at first declined this tempting present, but then foolishly allowed his wife to accept it at a White
House ceremony.
It became a major scandal with the wily political periodical, Puck, observing, “To his utter amazement Mr. Harrison received his first lesson
in official etiquette, the very existence of which he had hitherto been ignorant. He learned that men in high office should not accept valuable presents unless they
wished to lay themselves open to the suspicion of bribe taking. He learned that a high official is held responsible for valuable presents accepted by his wife. He
learned that the more or less valuable present that his wife had accepted, and for the acceptance of which he was held responsible, was given with the ulterior purpose
of increasing the fame of Cape May Point, and of facilitating the sale of real estate at that sweet seaside spot, and that some of the men who gave it were speculating
in that same real estate.”
In 1890 the area east of Coral Avenue near the lighthouse was devoid of houses. Almost overnight the construction of two key buildings changed that.
One was the colossal Harrison Cottage. The other was the Shoreham Hotel, opened that same year. In no time half a dozen huge new homes clustered around them,
drawn there like bees to honey.
The Shoreham was the new face in town and a lot of folks were betting on it. In one way their wager was right – it’s still standing, though it hasn’t
been a hotel for over a century.
Sadly it was an example of really bad timing. There’s little doubt that the hotel’s developers were counting on the prestige of Harrison’s
presence to stimulate trade. The hotel’s manager, A. H. Hamilton, who practically owned Cape May Point, was a member of the syndicate that had presented the
presidential cottage to Mrs. Harrison.
Several nasty problems arose. First, Mrs. Harrison died suddenly in 1892. Then, that same year, Harrison didn’t run for a second term. And finally,
none of the Harrison family ever returned to their palatial summer home. The district’s presidential attraction had vanished. The coup
de grace was the financial panic of 1897. The hotel barely survived into the twentieth century and no more such great houses were to be built in Cape May Point.
The Socialites
Today, a country club in Cape May Point is inconceivable. It would be out of place here. In the 1890’s sentiment was different. The drive for social status was
very much alive. What better way to establish one’s position than membership in a club for one’s equals (or betters)?
A physician from Pittsburgh, Dr. Randall T. Hazzard, may have been dreaming such dreams. Why not build his own country club? On Lake drive at the corner of Central
Avenue, at considerable expense, he converted the abandoned icehouse into The Cape May Social Club. With its wide porches
commanding a great view of Lily Lake, and its giant parlor furnished with a dazzling fireplace and elegant stairway, it was a splendid transformation.
Announcing that its object was “the advancement of social life in Cape May Point”, it opened its doors on August 11, 1899 with (what else) a reception and tea.
The ladies gathered weekly for euchre and whist, and every month a tea party cemented their social bonds.
Determined to make the lake and the clubhouse the focal point of social life, Hazzard also built the famous “rustic bridge” overlooking the clumps of lily pads
at the north end of the lake. An annual water fete, with the bridge, boats, and clubhouse ablaze with lights, would attract 200 guests. The venture was a success.
Hazzard further sealed his standing in the community with the impressive cottage he built close to the Shoreham
Hotel and across from the Harrison property. Convinced of Cape May Point’s bright future, he acquired a number of lots nearby and built several cottages on
speculation. All this was in 1899. Unfortunately, the Point was about to enter a decline that would persist for half a century.
An Uneven Fight
The construction of timber bulkheads and jetties has been the favored means of retarding erosion throughout most
of Cape May Point’s history. In the nineteenth century they were the sole devices. The contest between storm and structure was unbalanced. The sea as always had the
upper hand.
The earliest seawall, built in 1875, was a pretty substantial structure. Two rows of oak pilings, about twenty
feet apart, were driven along the beachfront to protect Beach Drive. On the outer, or ocean side row, the pilings were placed tight against each other. For the inner
row they were spaced about five feet apart and braced by timbers to the outer row. Three-inch planking was spiked to heavy top and bottom rails along the outer row to
keep sand from washing out behind them. Space between the rows was filled with soil.
All such bulkheads have an intrinsic flaw. They reflect energy from the waves and remove sand from the beach,
steepening the offshore profile. It became clear that they were not the best defense. Some suggested a seawall of granite boulders, but there was no money for such an
expensive project.
The use of jetties at that time was rather limited. The first two built in 1875 and 1876 were nothing more than a
row of pilings extending out 200 feet into the sea. Two years later a new type of jetty construction, named the Hughes Jetty
after the man who had patented it, was tried out with some success. One was installed in front of the Wanamaker cottage at Emerald Avenue. There were reports that the
new jetty put the high tide mark 70 feet further out to sea. Now the critics complained that it should have been built higher because the beach level had risen so much
that parts of it were covered with sand.
Vanishing Sea Grove
The first things to go were the dunes, then the streets, and finally – the cottages.
In 1875, as the Sea Grove Association cleared the land for streets and building lots, they wanted an unobstructed
view from the Pavilion down the broad avenues of Ocean, Cape and Central to the ocean and bay. Down came the protective sand dunes in a folly that has taken a hundred
years to remedy,
The next year brought two heavy storms. The first came mid-September with gale force winds of 65 mph, the worst storm in many years, they said. The
beach drive between Sea Grove and Cape May City was hit hard. With no breakwater of pilings to protect it from the high tides, the surf pounded away at its gravel
surface until it became impassable.
Three months later an even more furious November storm finished off what the previous one had started. This time
the Signal Station by the beach at Emerald Avenue registered gale force winds at 72 mph. Even the substantial bulkhead that ran along Beach Drive in Sea Grove suffered
extensive damage.
By 1879 the pilings that lined the shore to
form a breakwater had been damaged year after year. A whole block of Beach Avenue was damaged. An early September storm took away the steamboat landing at Sunset Beach
before it could be taken down and stored for the winter.
Trouble came again only two years later. At the corner of Beach and Emerald the impressive villa of John Wanamaker stood flanked by a protective brick
wall and set well back from the street. Next door was the government Signal Station and then the elegant Victorian cottage of A. G. Crowell (since moved twice and now
called The Gray Ghost) The October northeaster of 1891 not only chewed up the Beach Drive, it tore away the front section of
Wanamaker’s brick garden wall.
Two years later the erosion was spreading both east and west. This time the damage consumed the gravel drive in front of the Carlton Hotel (the old Sea
Grove House) severely injuring a youth that was passing by. The natives were getting restless. The whole town was screaming for the commissioners to do something to
stop this destruction.
The worst came last in 1899. This time it was a hurricane. The Cape May Star described some of the mayhem, “In front of the Point the beach
was cut away badly, the brick foundation of Carlton Hall being washed down and the building barely escaped being precipitated into the sea. The steamboat wharf was torn
asunder and its parts distributed for two miles along the shore, the water washing up on the porch of the Delaware Bay House (An excursion hotel located by the
steamship landing on Sunset Beach) The local railroads are practically destroyed, the rails being twisted in every conceivable manner, and the track being carried in
some instances a hundred yards inland.”
Many beachfront owners just gave up. The Cape May Wave said, “A
number of houses in this place are to be removed to better locations and rebuilt” This statement was prophetic – the house-moving parade continued for the next
fifty years. Cape May Point’s unceasing efforts to hold back the ocean’s rampages are still going on to this day.
Those attracted to Cape May Point in the last quarter of the nineteenth century were largely from the professional or business world. Doctors, lawyers,
and ministers mixed with men who had made their money in manufacturing or in commerce. John Wanamaker, more or less Whilldin’s co-founder, was the leading light of
this society. The country’s most successful retail merchant, Wanamaker was a tireless supporter of Cape May Point. For 25 years he was its most conspicuous summer
visitor, except during the brief appearance of President Harrison in the early nineties.
They built their summer homes by the sea or they stayed in one of the three hotels along Cape Avenue. Social life centered on the largest one, Carlton
Hall (as the Sea Grove House was renamed after its bankruptcy sale). It wasn’t until 1890 that the town’s social center began to drift as the area near the
lighthouse drew in the Shoreham Hotel and the President’s Cottage. By the end of the century the Cape May Point Country Club on Lake Lily was making its bid for
society’s homage. But society was leaving and the town was about to change.
People of lesser means did not generally build the nineteenth century gingerbread cottages. They were more likely to stay in one of the many boarding
houses, or to occupy the cottages that had been built as rental properties by the more affluent. Most of the 25-foot wide lots along Alexander Avenue had small
dwellings where the hotels’ waiters and chambermaids lived.
Fortunately, significant reminders of nineteenth century Cape May Point can still be found today. The most obvious remnant is the radial street plan
with Pavilion Circle at its center. All the streets are the same – even their names. What’s not the same is the disappearance of many, but they were all present and
accounted for as late as 1900.
Throughout the town most of the pre-1900 cottages have survived – some 60 in all. A number have been moved and most are substantially altered. For
about three dozen of them the changes have been superficial. Although dispersed among the twentieth century houses they are easily recognized and help to give the Point
its special character.
Three of the five churches built in the 1880’s still exist, with only St. Agnes at its original location. The Beadle Memorial on Cape Avenue has been
moved twice. St. Peters on Ocean Avenue is at its fourth address. The African Methodist Episcopal Church on Alexander Avenue was lost to fire, probably arson, in the
1920’s. At the corner of Cape and Pavilion Avenues stands the Union Chapel, rebuilt in 1968 after an electrical fire took down the original building.
The hotels were less fortunate than the churches. Today the old Shoreham (now St. Mary’s by the Sea) is all that’s left of the Point’s four
nineteenth century hotels. If it were not for the Catholic Sisters of St. Joseph, who acquired it as a summer retreat house in 1909, they would all be gone.
Long gone also are the dozens of stores that were scattered around the Point. The signal station on Beach Avenue,
designed by J. C. Sidney, which, for twenty years, had monitored many a storm, came down soon after 1900. We still have the old schoolhouse on Cambridge Avenue, now a
residence. The dense woods of Oak and Holly that stretched from the circle to the turnpike are scarcely discernable today, victims of twentieth century housing
development.
A New Century
The turn of the century brought new demographics. It remained a middle class community but there was a subtle
shift of income levels from upper middle toward lower middle. The housing stock reflected the economic drift.
Cape Avenue had been a dividing line between two halves of the community. Throughout the nineteenth century the ocean side of Cape was favored over the
bay side. To some, the bay side, especially between Central and Alexander Avenues, was the “wrong side of the tracks.” This section including Alexander Avenue is
where the hotel’s service-workers lived and where the United Brethren put up their camp ground tents in the 1890’s.
Almost all of the houses constructed during the nineteenth century were two or more stories high, built in the prevailing Victorian style featured in
the builder’s journals. The early twentieth century brought on the invasion of the bungalows. Suddenly the previous pattern was reversed – no more two-story
cottages, just little one-story bungalows. More than a hundred sprang up during this period. They were very small, little more than a third the size of their
predecessors.
Now it was the bay side of town that got the lion’s share of new
houses – by a margin of two to one! The Beach Avenue block was now in the bay, but the section from Chrystal to Coral was filling out fast. Few had architectural
ambitions; they were built for shelter and economy, not for prestige. Some were called “Frank Rutherford Specials” after the local carpenter builder who had put up
so many of them.
The look of the town was changing in other ways. New folks were building upon the wooded lots to the north and
west. Coastal storms were relentlessly chewing away the coastline. Hotels and shops were closing - well before the great depression brought almost everything to a
standstill. These dynamic differences between nineteenth and twentieth century Cape May Point are evident today and a significant reason for its appeal as a unique
seashore community.