Atlantic City

“ One goes to the seaside not for pomp and peacock's tails, but for saltness, Nature and a bite of fresh fish. To build a city there that shall not be an insult to the sentiment of the place is a matter of difficulty. One's ideal, after all, is a canvas encampment. A range of solid stone villas like those of Newport, so far as congruity with a watering-place goes, pains the taste like a false note in music. Atlantic City pauses halfway between the stone house and the tent, and erects herself in woodwork. ”

“ One can walk for miles along its length, seeing a strange procession of human beings, but its new look, the fact that it is made of wood, tends to give Atlantic City an uncertain and unstable foundation. It spoiled the effect of our hotel with its magnificent architecture. Still it provides a very restful way to walk, and I suppose it has its uses. I am a little astonished that Americans should come to this strange place and turn themselves into money fountains and, upon running dry, return to business; though of course it is fine to be with a crowd of cheerful people. ”

“ They tell me here that they don't want the excursion crowds that overrun Atlantic City, but an Atlantic City man, whom I met at the pier, said that Cape May used to be the boss, but that Atlantic City had got the bulge on it now—had thousands to the hundreds here. To get the bulge seems a desirable thing in America, and I think we'd better see what a place is like that is popular, whether fashion recognizes it or not. ”

“ FRITZ TO THE FRONT. CHAPTER I MADGE.
One bright, hot August morning a cheap excursion was advertised to leave South Street wharf, Philadelphia, for Atlantic City—that lively little city by the sea, which is so fast growing in size and popularity as to rival the more noted of the Atlantic coast summer resorts. A cheap excursion which is within the means of the working class is ever a success, and this one was no exception; it gave the masses a chance to escape from the overheated city for a small sum, and they grasped at it eagerly. ”

“ I forget how many piers Atlantic City has, but it is unusually rich in these structures, and I have no doubt that the builders of them were wise. A pier makes an irresistible appeal to the pleasure-seeker. He would rather dance on a pier, under proper shelter, of course, and on a good floor, than in a well-appointed salon on solid land. He would rather eat ices on a pier than in an ordinary shop, though he has to pay more for them, the cost of the ice being the same and the two pence for entry into the enchanted region being an extra. ”

“ We did not understand the philosophy of these dog productions at first, and were therefore a little nervous all the time we were in Atlantic City, but not, I am glad to say, nervous enough to have our enjoyment of the place spoiled. Nothing would induce me to say, or for a single moment to think, that Atlantic City is in any way a characteristic product of American civilization. All our civilizations produce places of this kind. But it is fair, I think, to say that America does this particular thing better than any other country. Superior people might say that America does it worse ”

“ Behind and below the Boardwalk, between the Inlet and Iowa Avenue, Atlantic City proper, a dignified town of a prevailing gray tone, rambled back to the Thoroughfares and the salt marshes, and on the south merged into the faubourg of Chelsea. It was a town with a life of its own and regarded its façade as almost if not wholly negligible. Its social life, like that of other small towns, revolved about its churches, Episcopalianism representing the flake of the crust, and its women’s clubs were often storm-centers of politics. ”

“ The American public will have millions in their calculations and their lust for the superlative must be appeased.
In Atlantic City there are naturally many objects of interest to the budding student of modern life like myself, but, on the whole, the amusements of this nation do not differ considerably from the modest efforts of our own. There one can see the usual bashful maidens whose main delight is to recline on the sand or parade the beach in the latest thing in bathing costumes,—but never under any circumstances to get them wet. ”

“ It would be incorrect to say that the best people do not go to Atlantic City. Americans, I believe, reckon this well-known seaside resort to be one of the nine wonders of the world. No free-born American citizen, I do not doubt, would give the credit of the other eight, whatever they may be, to any foreign country. ”

“ At any rate it is the fate of Folkestone to grow morally and civically more and more like Atlantic City, which somehow persists in offering itself in its wild, wooden ugliness for a contrast as well as a parallel of the English watering-place. Nothing could be more unlike the Leas than the Board Walk; nothing more unlike their picturesque declivity than the flat sands on which the vast hotels and toy cottages of the New Jersey summer-resort are built ”

“ How this vast seaside population thrills one, bringing visions of the "vastness and wealth of teeming millions" of this great nation of ours. One author says, and with truth, that Atlantic City could accommodate all of France and still have room for more while Asbury Park would furnish ample room as a seaside resort for Belgium and Holland.
Atlantic City, known throughout the world as a great all-the- year resort, is situated upon Absecon Island off the Jersey coast. ”

“ For the prevailing blandness of the atmosphere had keen little points and edges of cold in it; and vagarious gusts caught and tossed the smoke from the chimney-pots of the pretty town along the sea-level below the Leas, giving away here to the wooded walks, and gaining there upon them. Inspired by the presence of a steel pier half as long as that of Atlantic City, with the same sort of pavilion for entertainments at the end, we tried to fancy that the spring was farther advanced with us at home, but we could only make sure that it would be summer sooner and fiercer. ”

“ Atlantic City is apparently the pioneer air port of the country, and for many reasons this is natural. There are political and social advantages which make Atlantic City ideal. Rules have been laid down for the coming and going of airships, and a field for land machines and water space for seaplanes have been laid out. ”

“ Now Atlantic City is just one hundred per cent. American. It would be impossible to associate it with any other country but America. To begin with, it has the inevitable "million-dollar" pier. Let me explain that nothing in America is worthy of popular patronage unless it costs at least a million dollars. When I was at Niagara I was told how many million gallons of water flowed over the falls in a year. No one (on the American side) seemed to worry very much about the magnificence of the falls or the grandeur of the river. Such sordid interests do not appeal to them. ”

“ In order to pass from Cape May to Atlantic City one takes a long circuit by rail through the Jersey sands. Jersey is a very prolific State, but the railway traveler by this route is excellently prepared for Atlantic City, for he sees little but sand, stunted pines, scrub oaks, small frame houses, sometimes trying to hide in the clumps of scrub oaks, and the villages are just collections of the same small frame houses hopelessly decorated with scroll-work and obtrusively painted, standing in lines on sandy streets, adorned with lean shade-trees. ”

“ Its close proximity to the large eastern centers of population give it an unrivaled location. The climate is made equable by the Gulf Stream. It is much warmer here in winter than at New York or Philadelphia and weather records show sixty-two per cent sunshine. Motorists visit the seashore metropolis by tens of thousands in all seasons of the year.
Atlantic City has one thousand two hundred hotels and boarding houses to meet every purse and entertains twenty million people annually, the transient population reaching four hundred thousand in August and never being less than fifty thousand. ”

“ To these many attractive places the summer exodus takes the people by the hundreds of thousands. The chief resort of all is Atlantic City, which has come to be the most popular sea-bathing place of the country, the railroads running excursion trains to it even from the Mississippi Valley. Three railroads lead over from Philadelphia across the level Jersey surface, and their fast trains compass the distance, fifty-six miles, in an hour. The town is built on a narrow sand-strip known as Absecon Island, which is separated from the mainland by a broad stretch of water and salt meadows. ”

“ In this respect Atlantic City has for Philadelphia a superiority over all its rivals. The Camden and Atlantic Railroad, to whose secretary and treasurer, Mr. D.M. Zimmermann, we are indebted for much information, has simply drawn a straight line to the coast, which may be reached in an hour and three-quarters from Vine street wharf. The villages on the route, like the seaside terminus, owe their existence to the road, which is now reaping the reward of a far-sighted enterprise. ”

“ The hotels in Atlantic City are, most of them, as fantastic in appearance as the place itself. I imagine that the architects who planned them must, before they began their work, have been kept for weeks on the sea-front and forced to go to all the entertainments which offered themselves by day and night. ”

“ Alfred Stone as he stood on the boardwalk opposite the Marlborough-Blenheim asked himself why some bold thinker had not elucidated the psychology of Atlantic City. It has no moral landscape, he told himself, though it boasts the finest of seascapes. If there had been invented, as there will be some day, a psychic cinematograph, then, perhaps, a complete picture might be presented of this vulgar and fascinating resort—for vulgar in the sense of popularity it unquestionably is ”

“ Nice is on the style of Atlantic City. If you ask me, I like Atlantic City better, but then that's because they speak United States there. Still Nice has a great bathing beach—you have to hand it to them—and you get so you like them little tables set out in front of the cafés, where they "parlez-vous" with each other and drink quarts of red ink.
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We'd hike over to Nice every shore leave. Some of the crew went as far as Monte Carlo, but not me. I was satisfied. Besides, one place was as sporty as the other, if that was what you wanted. ”

“ At the junction, a small collection of wooden shanties, where the travelers waited an hour, they heard much of the glories of Atlantic City from the postmistress, who was waiting for an excursion some time to go there (the passion for excursions seems to be a growing one) , and they made the acquaintance of a cow tied in the room next the ticket-office, probably also waiting for a passage to the city by the sea.
And a city it is. If many houses, endless avenues, sand, paint, make a city, the artist confessed that this was one. Everything is on a large scale. ”

“ The entire sea-coast is rapidly becoming a continuous line of summer resorts, among which may be enumerated Long Branch, Sea Bright, Spring Lake, and Asbury Park in the northern portion, Atlantic City in the centre, and Cape May in the south. ”

“ At the Inlet, which penetrates the beach alongside the lighthouse, is draught for light vessels, and the various kinds of society which focus at Atlantic City may be seen concentrated there on the wharf any of these bright warm days. ”

“ None of the other pleasure cities we have visited have had such a drastic effect upon us. Postcards we yield to everywhere. Even the dreariest of second-rate watering places can sell them to us. In Blackpool I found a paper-knife irresistible. In Portrush I once bought a colored mug. Atlantic City alone could have sold me potato-choppers, two of them.
In towns and rural districts where men and women live their ordinary lives, work, love and ultimately die, it is the rarest thing possible to see any grown person wheeled about in a perambulator or bath chair. ”

“ They sometimes make people sick. They are expensive. They demand an undivided allegiance. You cannot have a cinematograph, for instance, in a boat. The nearest thing to a boat is a pier. It is almost surrounded by the sea. That is why piers are a regular feature of up-to-date pleasure cities, and why Atlantic City has so many of them. It is all to the credit of our revelers that they love to be near the sea, to feel it round them, to hear it splashing under their feet. The sea is the cleanest thing there is. ”

“ When there is a lull in the season they bring on half a dozen conventions and fill the trains and the hotels with the delegates. That Atlantic City plant does not lie idle much of the time. There are nearly 800 hotels there to-day—more than fifty of them huge structures—and on a busy day 300,000 people are along the famous boardwalk above the beach. In dull days the big hotels are comfortably filled. ”

“ The trains which connect it with New York have indeed the reputation of being the fastest in the world, but that may not be because every one is in a great hurry to get to Atlantic City. They run at high speed both ways, and it is quite possible that some men may be in an equal hurry to get away. Our friends were certainly a little cold when we said we were going there. Left to ourselves, or meekly following, as we generally do, the advice given to us by well-instructed people, we should not have gone to Atlantic City. ”