Atlantic City is a city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States. Famous for its boardwalk, casino gambling, sandy beaches, shopping centers, 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 2008, the city has a population of 35,770, 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 km) and it extended from Atlantic City to Longport, through Ventnor and Margate. Today, it is 4.12 miles (6.63 km) 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 km), 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. Steeplechase 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 made 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 at 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, opened in 1868, and Haddon House, opened in 1869, flanked North Carolina Avenue at the beach end. Their original wood-frame structures would be enlarged, and even moved closer to the beach, over the years. The modern Chalfonte Hotel, eight stories tall, opened in 1904. The modern Haddon Hall was built in stages and was completed in 1929, at eleven stories. By this time, they were under the same ownership and merged into the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel, becoming 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.
Decline and resurgence
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 allowed them 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 their interest in flocking 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, 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 gaming, many of these hotels were 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 old Ambassador Hotel was extensively renovated to become the Tropicana Hotel and Casino, removing the Ambassador's distinctive brick facade, and replacing it 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 plagu
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