Featured Apartment:
New Jersey-Atlantic City - We've got a newly-renovated one bedroom unit that has a great layout for roommates who need their privacy but also need a one-bedroom sized rent. In this apartment, we've put a door on the living room, so it can be used as a second bedroom. Studio apartments, lofts, and efficiency apartments also available. View More Listings -->
Atlantic City Information
Atlantic City is a city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, USA. As of the United
States 2000 Census, the city population was 40,517. It is a resort community
located on Absecon Island, off the Atlantic Ocean coast of New Jersey. Other
municipalities on the island are Ventnor City, Margate City, and Longport. The
main route onto the island containing Atlantic City is the Atlantic City
Expressway.
Atlantic City has always been primarily 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 the more populated, urban centers of New York City and Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. Atlantic City became a popular beach destination because of its
proximity to Philadelphia.
In 1870, the first boardwalk was built 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) long and it extended from Atlantic City, through Ventnor and
Margate, into Longport. Today, it is 4.12 miles (6.63 kilometers) long and 60
feet (20 meters) wide, reinforced with steel and concrete. The combined length
of the Atlantic City and Ventnor Boardwalks is approximately 5.75 miles (9.25
kilometers) long. It is now the world's longest boardwalk.
Ocean Pier, the world's first oceanside amusement pier was built in Atlantic
City in 1882.[1] Other famous piers included the now-defunct Steel Pier (opened
1898) and the Million Dollar Pier (opened 1906), now the site of a shopping
mall.
During the early part of the 20th Century, Atlantic City went through a radical
building boom. Modest little boarding houses that dotted the boardwalk would
grow into monster sand castles by the sea. Two of the city’s most distinctive
hotels were the Marlborough-Blenheim and the Traymore Hotels.
In 1903, Josiah White III bought a parcel of land near Ohio Avenue (today the
site of Bally's Atlantic City) and the boardwalk and built the Queen Anne style
Marlborough House. The hotel was a hit and in 1905-1906 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 to design his hotel. The architectural
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 theme 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.
Across the way at the corner of Illinois Avenue and the boardwalk, would grow
the city’s most distinctive hotel, The Traymore. Began in 1879 as a small
boarding house, the hotel grew through a series of uncoordinated expansion. 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 was best known
for making use of ocean-facing hotel rooms by jutting its wings farther out from
the main portion of the hotel along Pacific Avenue.
One by one, other large hotels sprung up along the Boardwalk. The Brighton, the
Chelsea, The Shelburne. The Ambassador, The Ritz Carlton, the Breakers, best
known for its snob appeal for only the highest class of person roomed there and
enjoyed its roof top garden lounge. The Quaker-owned Chalfonte House and Haddon
Hall opened in the 1890's, would by the twenties merge into the Chalfonte-Haddon
Hall and would become the city’s largest hotel with nearly one thousand rooms.
By 1930, the city’s last large hotel, the Claridge, would open. At nearly
twenty-four stories it would become known as the “Skyscraper By The Sea.”
The city hosted the 1964 Democratic National Convention which nominated Lyndon
Johnson for President and Hubert Humphrey as Vice President. The ticket won in a
landslide 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 LBJ and
the Governor of New Jersey at that time, Richard J. Hughes, led Atlantic City to
host the Democratic Convention.
Like all major cities, Atlantic City contains distinct neighborhoods or
districts. The communities are known as: The Inlet, Bungalow Park; The Marina
District (also known as Back Maryland), Midtown, Westside, Ducktown, Chelsea,
Chelsea Heights and Venice Park.
Like many older urban communities, 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. In an
effort at revitalizing the city, New Jersey voters in 1976 approved casino
gambling for the city of Atlantic City. Resorts International became 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. Drug-infested tenements in poor condition stand
directly beside multi-billion dollar casino hotels along the ocean in some
locations. 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. 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. It is also
Ripley's most famous odditorium.
Atlantic City is home to New Jersey's first wind farm. The Jersey-Atlantic Wind
Farm consists of five 1.5 MW turbine towers, each almost 400 feet (120 meters)
high.
Gambling was stopped for the first time since 1978 at 8:00 a.m. on July 5, 2006,
during the 2006 New Jersey State Government Shutdown mandated by Governor Jon
Corzine. The casinos reopened at 7:00 p.m. on July 8, 2006.