Feature Basil Nestor
Playground by the Sea
A look back at 150 years of entertainment, amusement and leisure

OK, let’s get this said right up front. I love Atlantic City. I love everything about it. The piers, gambling palaces, pawn shops, gourmet dining, pizza and sandwich joints, rolling chairs, kitschy souvenirs, crashing surf… I love it all!

I adore Atlantic City in a way that is entirely different than my affection for Las Vegas. For me, the Neon Oasis is like a beguiling but dangerous lover; she’s entertaining, outrageous, and she may con me unless I’m careful. It’s edgy fun. Atlantic City is more like cigar-chomping Uncle Lou, a gregarious bear-hug of a town with hearty laughter and quirky customs. Yes, Uncle Lou may also con me, but, “Hey kid, we’re family. It’s only a sawbuck!” I’m smiling as I reach for the cash.

Of course, the really cool part about hanging with Uncle Lou is hearing the stories. I suppose that’s what I love most about Atlantic City. It’s a magnet for history, a time-traveler’s transfer hub where the famous, the infamous and the amazing all rub shoulders and get sand in their shoes.

The most important thing to remember about Atlantic City is that it has influenced your life in ways you probably don’t know. If you’ve ever used the words postcard, lifeguard, boardwalk or airport, then you’ve been touched by Atlantic City. If you played Monopoly as a child, then Atlantic City is in your past. Salt water taffy, Miss America, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, Rudolph Valentino, Harry Houdini, cakewalk dancing, Heinz 57 varieties, Mr. Peanut and countless other cultural touchstones are fundamentally tied to this remarkable resort by the sea. Even Las Vegas owes it a nod.

That’s funny because most people these days think Atlantic City jumped on the gambling bandwagon and got glitzy after Las Vegas. Yes, if the subject is legal gambling, but the idea of a “carpet joint” was fully formed in Atlantic City and had been around for decades when Ben (Bugsy) Siegel was still kicking sand in the desert. In fact, Atlantic City was glitzy fifty years before that, back when Las Vegas didn’t have indoor plumbing. And we have to jump back another hundred years to reach the beginning of Atlantic City’s story. So here we go.

Build It and They Will Come
Dr. Jonathan Pitney, the father of Atlantic City, was born in New Jersey in 1797. He grew up in the heady early days of the United States, a time when the Age of Enlightenment was crashing into the Industrial Revolution. Everything seemed possible. Everyone believed that brainpower and mechanical innovations could build a perfect world.

John Pitney’s idea of perfection was a “bathing village and health resort,” a place where salt water and sea air would provide therapy for people who were ill from city living. The place he chose for his resort was Absecon Island just off the coast of New Jersey. It had once been the summer hunting ground for Native Americans; the Lenni-Lenape Indians called the place Absegami, which meant “little sea water.” The island was southeast of Philadelphia by sixty miles and south of New York City by about one hundred. Those distances sound minuscule today, but back in the early 1800’s it was a trek that could take two days. It’s no wonder that Absecon Island at that time had only seven permanent dwellings and one tavern/inn called Aunt Millie’s Boarding House (located at the present-day intersection of Baltic and Massachusetts avenues).

Pitney’s island was literally in the middle of nowhere, but all that was about to change because of a newfangled invention called the railroad. The first railroads in the United States were built around 1830, and by 1850 the economics of locomotion were evident; towns near railroads inevitably prospered. So in 1851 Pitney decided to build a line to Absecon Island. Detractors called the project a “railroad to nowhere,” but the doctor would not be put off. He was 54 years old at that point (a venerable age for the time). He’d served as a local postmaster, as a member of Atlantic County’s Board of Chosen Freeholders, and as a delegate to his state’s constitutional convention. He “knew” people, and a lot of them were very rich and influential. The power-politics that define Atlantic City to this day were there at its inception. Pitney skillfully worked the political system and rammed the project through.

The Camden and Atlantic Railroad Company was chartered one year later. Richard B. Osborne, a Philadelphian, was hired to survey the route. He designated the end of the line as “Atlantic City,” and thus it was. Pitney chose the street names. Those that ran parallel to the water were named after seas or oceans. The perpendicular streets were named after states. The city was incorporated in March 1854. Eighteen voters elected the first mayor.

On July 1 of that year, the first trainload of passengers arrived from Camden, a suburb of Philadelphia on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River. Atlantic City had been born.

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