Atlantic City

Atlantic City is a city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States. Famous for its boardwalk, casino gambling, sandy beaches, shopping centers, spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean, and as the inspiration for the board game Monopoly, Atlantic City is a resort community located on Absecon Island on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2009, the city has a population of 90,238, with 266,268 people living in the Atlantic City–Hammonton metropolitan statistical area. Other municipalities on the island are Ventnor City, Margate City, and Longport. The main routes into Atlantic City are the Black Horse Pike (US 322/40), White Horse Pike (US 30) and the Atlantic City Expressway. Atlantic City borders Absecon, Brigantine,Pleasantville, Ventnor and West Atlantic City (part of Egg Harbor Township).

Atlantic City was incorporated on May 1, 1854 by an act of the New Jersey Legislature. The new city contained portions of Egg Harbor Township and Galloway Township.

Atlantic City contains distinct neighborhoods or districts. The communities are known as: The North Inlet, The South Inlet, Bungalow Park, the Marina District, Venice Park, Downtown (Midtown), Ducktown, Chelsea, and Chelsea Heights.

History

Atlantic City has always been a resort town. Its location in South Jersey, hugging the Atlantic Ocean between marshlands and islands, presented itself as prime real estate for developers. The city was incorporated in 1854, the same year in which train service began, linking this remote parcel of land with Philadelphia. Atlantic City became a popular beach destination because of its proximity to Philadelphia.

The first boardwalk was built in 1870, along a portion of the beach to help hotel owners keep sand out of their lobbies. The idea caught on, and the boardwalk was expanded and modified several times in the following years. The historic length of the boardwalk, before the 1944 hurricane, was about 7 miles (11.2 kilometers) and it extended from Atlantic City to Longport, through Ventnor and Margate. Today, it is 4.12 miles (6.63 kilometers) long and 60 feet (18 m) wide, reinforced with steel and concrete. The combined length of the Atlantic City and Ventnor boardwalks—the boardwalk now ends at the Ventnor/Margate border—is approximately 5.75 miles (9.25 kilometers), currently the world's longest boardwalk. see also: Boardwalk Hall

Piers

Ocean Pier, the world's first oceanside amusement pier, was built in Atlantic City in 1882. Other famous piers included the Steel Pier, opened in 1898, and which once billed itself as "The Showplace of the Nation." It now finds itself opposite Trump Taj Mahal and is used as an amusement pier. The Million Dollar Pier opened in 1906 and is now opposite Caesar's Casino and houses the Pier Shops at Caesars. The Garden Pier once housed a movie theater, and is now home to the Atlantic City Historical Society and an Arts Center. Steeplchase Pier, strictly for amusements, once existed just west of Steel Pier. Heinz Pier, located just east of the Garden Pier, was famous for its Pickle Pins, but was destroyed in the Hurricane of 1944.

Historic hotels

During the early part of the 20th century, Atlantic City went through a radical building boom. Many of the modest boarding houses that dotted the boardwalk were replaced with large hotels. Two of the city’s most distinctive hotels were the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel and the Traymore Hotel.

In 1903, Josiah White III bought a parcel of land near Ohio Avenue and the boardwalk and built the Queen Anne style Marlborough House. The hotel was a hit and, in 1905–06, he chose to expand the hotel and bought another parcel of land next door to his Marlborough House. In an effort to make his new hotel a source of conversation, White hired the architectural firm of Price and McLanahan. The firm decided to make use of reinforced concrete, a new building material invented by Jean-Louis Lambot in 1848 (Joseph Monier received the patent in 1867). The hotel’s Spanish and Moorish themes, capped off with its signature dome and chimneys, represented a step forward from other hotels that had a classically designed influence. White named the new hotel the Blenheim and merged the two hotels into the Marlborough-Blenheim. Bally's Atlantic City was later constructed close to this location.

The Traymore Hotel was located at the corner of Illinois Avenue and the boardwalk. Begun in 1879 as a small boarding house, the hotel grew through a series of uncoordinated expansions. By 1914, the hotel’s owner, Daniel White, taking a hint from the Marlborough-Blenheim, commissioned the firm of Price and McLanahan to build an even bigger hotel. Sixteen stories high, the tan brick and gold-capped hotel would become one of the city’s best-known landmarks. The hotel made use of ocean-facing hotel rooms by jutting its wings farther from the main portion of the hotel along Pacific Avenue.

One by one, additional large hotels were constructed along the boardwalk, including the Brighton, Chelsea, Shelburne, Ambassador, Ritz Carlton, Mayflower, Madison House, and the Breakers. The Quaker-owned Chalfonte House and Haddon Hall, opened in the 1890s, would by the twenties merge into the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel and would become the city's largest hotel with nearly 1,000 rooms. By 1930, the Claridge, the city's last large hotel before the casinos, opened its doors. The 400-room Claridge was built by a partnership that included renowned Philadelphia contractor John McShain. At 24 stories, it would become known as the "Skyscraper By The Sea."

1964 Democratic National Convention

The city hosted the 1964 Democratic National Convention which nominated Lyndon Johnson for President and Hubert Humphrey as Vice President. The ticket won easily that November. The convention and the press coverage it generated, however, cast a harsh light on Atlantic City, which by then was in the midst of a long period of economic decline. Many felt that the friendship between Johnson and the Governor of New Jersey at that time, Richard J. Hughes, led Atlantic City to host the Democratic Convention.

Demise and rebirth

Like many older east coast cities after World War II, Atlantic City became plagued with poverty, crime, and disinvestment by the middle class in the mid to late 20th century. The neighborhood known as the "Inlet" became particularly impoverished. The reasons for the resort's decline were multi-layered. The automobile became available to many Americans after the war. Atlantic City had initially relied upon visitors coming by train and staying for a couple of weeks. The car would allow people to come and go as they pleased, and many people would spend only a few days, rather than weeks. Also, the advent of suburbia played a huge role. With many families moving to their own private houses, luxuries such as home air conditioning and swimming pools diminished the necessity for people to flock to the beach during the hot summer. Perhaps the biggest factor in the decline in Atlantic City's popularity came from cheap, fast jet service to other premiere resorts. Places such as Miami Beach and Nassau, Bahamas superseded Atlantic City as favored vacation spots.

By the late 1960s, the typical Atlantic City tourist was invariably poor, elderly, or both. Many of the resort's great hotels, which were suffering from embarrassing vacancy rates, were either closed, converted to cheap apartments, or converted to nursing home facilities. Prior to and during the advent of legalized gambling, many of these hotels would be demolished. The Breakers, the Chelsea, the Brighton, the Shelburne, the Mayflower, the Traymore, and the Marlborough Blenheim were demolished in the 1970s and 1980s. Of all the pre-casino resorts that bordered the boardwalk, only the Claridge, the Dennis (now part of Bally's Park Place) the Ritz Carlton and the Haddon Hall (now Resorts) survive to this day. The steel frame work of the old Ambassador Hotel was used for the Tropicana Hotel and Casino, although its distinctive brick facade was removed and replaced with a more modern one. Smaller hotels off the boardwalk also survived.

In an effort at revitalizing the city, New Jersey voters in 1976 approved casino gambling for Atlantic City; this came after a 1974 referendum on legalized gambling failed to pass. The Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel was converted into the Resorts International; it was the first legal casino in the eastern United States when it opened on May 26, 1978. Other casinos were soon added along the Boardwalk and later in the marina district for a total of eleven today. The introduction of gambling did not, however, quickly eliminate many of the urban problems that plagued Atlantic City. Many have argued that it only served to magnify those problems, as evidenced in the stark contrast between tourism-intensive areas and the adjacent impoverished working-class neighborhoods. In addition, Atlantic City has played second-fiddle to Las Vegas, Nevada, as a gambling mecca in the United States, although in the late 1970s and 1980s, when Las Vegas was experiencing a massive drop in tourism due to crime, particularly the Mafia's role, and other economic factors, Atlantic City was favored over Las Vegas. The rise of Mike Tyson in boxing, having most of his fights in Atlantic City in the '80s, also helped Atlantic City's popularity. On July 3, 2003, Atlantic City's newest casino, The Borgata, opened with much success. Another major attraction is the oldest remaining Ripley's Believe It or Not! Odditorium in the world.

A 75 percent smoking ban imposed by Atlantic City's City Council went into effect on April 15, 2007, limiting smoking to no more than 25 percent of the casino floor. Casino operators, especially Donald Trump have claimed that the ban places Atlantic City casinos at a competitive disadvantage with casinos in neighboring states and is leading to a revenue decline.

Atlantic City is home to New Jersey's first wind farm. The Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm consists of five 1.5 megawatt turbine towers, each almost 400 feet (120 m) high.

Gambling halted for the first time since 1978 on July 5, 2006, at 8.00 am, during the 2006 New Jersey State Government Shutdown mandated by the state constitution when the legislature failed to present a budget. The casinos generally remained open for entertainment and hotel services, but ceased gambling functions due to the absence of state regulators. The casinos resumed gambling functions at 7:00 p.m. on July 8, 2006.

From 2005 to 2006, Atlantic City had the highest percentage increase (25.9 percent) in average home value in the United States.

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