Ocean City Boardwalk Traditions: Atlantic Hotel

The establishment of Ocean City as a resort town is generally dated to the opening of The Atlantic Hotel, the town's first grand hotel, in 1875. The pictures above show the present Atlantic Hotel, which was constructed after the 1925 fire.

The top picture shows the south (Wicomico Street) side of the hotel with its classic neon sign on the southeast corner of the building. The picture was taken from the parking lot behind the hotel. The second picture is a view of the front of the hotel behind the modern facade of brick storefronts lining the boardwalk. At right is an Ocean City landmark plaque on the north side of the building, on Somerset Street. (You can click on the pictures to enlarge them.)

Tradition has it, according to George and Suzanne Hurley in "Ocean City, A Pictorial History," that the first oceanfront cottage to host paying guests in the area of present-day Ocean City was built in 1869 by Isaac Coffin. The guests at Mr. Coffin's Rhode Island Inn were mainly fishermen who cast for fish in the surf. They traveled by stagecoach or wagon, and were ferried to the barrier island by a small boat.

A second boarding house was built nearby by James Massey in 1872. The exact locations of these first two inns are uncertain, according to the Hurleys. Sources place the Coffin inn in the area of the present inlet, and the Masey inn possibly at Wicomico Street and Baltimore Avenue.

In the summer of 1872, a group of businessmen from the Eastern Shore, Baltimore and Philadelphia visited the beach to select a site for the resort, and in 1874, a railroad line was extended from Berlin to the mainland side of the Sinepuxent Bay, setting the stage for the first major development.

Construction began on the Atlantic Hotel in 1874, and the hotel was dedicated and opened for business on July 4, 1875. The Atlantic was a four-story structure, built high off the sand and stretching back a block from the beach. It advertised 400 rooms. By 1876, the railroad had been extended across the bay to the barrier island on a trestle bridge, according to the Hurleys.

The original Atlantic Hotel was destroyed in the fire of 1925 and the present structure was built the following year.

George and Suzanne Hurley's history of Ocean City preserves an invaluable collection of early photographs, which the authors compiled with contributions from many of the resort's families. Ocean City, Maryland, A Pictorial History, was published by Donning Company/Publishers of Virginia Beach, VA, in 1979 and had its third printing in 1991. It is currently out of print, but used copies may be available from Amazon.com and other sources. The Worcester County Library has copies of "Ocean City, Maryland, A Pictorial History" available for borrowing.