Ocean City Then & Now – The Shoreham
309 Atlantic Avenue
by Gordon E. Katz
January 2019
From The Baltimore Sun, June 25, 1916
The Shoreham, situated on the south corner of 4th Street on the Boardwalk, is the oldest hotel building in continuous service in Ocean City today. The hotel has been in operation every summer season since opening in 1923, lodging visitors in the same structure at the same location. Other hotels, such as the Atlantic, the Plimhimmon/Plim Plaza, the Rideau and the Breakers, have been around longer, but those hotels’ present structures were built at later dates, after the original buildings either burned down or were torn down.
Prelude: The “Fox Cottage” and “Tourist Inn”
Minnie B. Jackson bought the lot on the southwest corner of 4th Street and the Boardwalk in 1892. The northern end of the Boardwalk at that time ended at 7th Street. We know very little about Mrs. Jackson, other than she was a well-to-do widow from Baltimore (or Baltimore County). Mrs. Jackson purchased the two adjoining lots along the Boardwalk in 1896, and had a cottage erected on the northerly part of her property in 1897. She rented the cottage that season to Washington, D. C. attorney Duane E. Fox and his family.
Duane E. Fox and his wife Matilda were two of the large group of the upper class from Washington and Baltimore that dominated Ocean City’s social scene from the early 1890’s until around 1906. The wealthy visitors often stayed for the entire summer, filling up the Atlantic and the Plimhimmon, which were the axis around which the resort’s fashionable entertainments revolved, as well as the hotels in between and the cottages that stretched northward along the Boardwalk. The other group of summer visitors, the excursionists who might only spend a day or two at the beach, were largely relegated to the southern end of the Boardwalk. The two groups rarely interacted.
Mr. Fox and his family were perennial summer visitors in Ocean City for more than fifteen years. They hosted parties and other events at their cottage, which became known as the “Fox cottage” even though they did not own it. They were often among the last to leave the beach at the end of the season, frequently extending their stays into October. Even after their peers had largely abandoned the resort after 1906, the Fox family continued to spend the summer in Ocean City through the 1912 season, but did not return after that.
Having lost her long-term tenant, Mrs. Jackson, then living in Florida, sold the lots and cottage to Lemuel A. Wyatt in 1913. Wyatt was a local builder who had earlier purchased “The Gables”, located next to the Presbyterian Church (now the Baptist Church) on Baltimore Avenue near North Division Street. He turned the “Fox cottage” into a boarding house that he called the “Tourist Inn” (see illustration 1). His wife Laura, the daughter of Josephine and Kendall Hastings, managed The Gables property, while Lemuel leased the Tourist Inn to others to manage for him.
The Shoreham as it appeared circa 1925.
Courtesy of Cindy Vollmerhausen
Lemuel Wyatt’s creditors forced him into bankruptcy in late 1916. At a public auction held on January 17, 1917, Oliver D. Collins, the Worcester County Clerk, purchased the Tourist Inn. Collins had previously purchased the then-vacant southern half of the property from Wyatt in 1914. He continued to operate the boarding house as the Tourist Inn.
The Shoreham
In the spring of 1922, Collins sold the Tourist Inn to Lemuel Wyatt’s mother-in-law, Josephine Hastings. Mrs. Hastings had built the New Avalon Hotel on Baltimore Avenue between North Division Street and North 1st Street in 1903 and the Hastings Hotel on the Boardwalk between 2nd Street and 3rd Street in 1916. She proceeded to tear down the old cottage on the corner of 4th Street and the Boardwalk, and erect a new hotel on the site. As reported in the Worcester Democrat on December 23, 1922, “Mrs. [Josephine] Hastings has completed the building of her new hotel on the Oliver Collins site just above the Merview [Mervue Hotel, located on the Boardwalk between 3rd Street and 4th Street]. It is a spacious forty room hotel, equipped with all modern appliances, with sixteen bathrooms, and so arranged that guests may secure room and bath if desired. The new hotel is to be called the Traymore; and will be opened by Mrs. Hastings in the early spring.”
A follow-up article published on January 20, 1923 provided this update: “Miss Josephine Hastings, formerly of the Hastings Hotel, has completed the erection of a new hotel on the Boardwalk, consisting of forty rooms, with bath attached. This hotel will open to the public June 15, 1923, and is to be named after the Traymore Hotel, of Atlantic City.” We don’t know why, but Mrs. Hastings decided to change the name of her new hotel to “The Shoreham”. The hotel opened a couple of months ahead of the announced date, as seen in this advertisement placed in The Baltimore Sun on April 12, 1923:
THE SHOREHAM
Opens April 15, 1923. Ocean City’s most up-to-date hotel. Just completed. New throughout. Private baths and running water. Directly on the Boardwalk. Mrs. Kendall C. Hastings, Ownership Management.
The Shoreham circa 1935, after Dr. and Mrs. Cropper had enlarged the building. Courtesy of Cindy Vollmerhausen
Dr. Horace O. Cropper and his wife Amanda Ayres Cropper bought The Shoreham from Josephine Hastings in 1926. According to Dr. Cropper’s obituary published in 1958, he was an “eye specialist and real estate dealer” and a veteran of the Spanish-American War. Mrs. Cropper was the granddaughter of Isaac Coffin, the man who in 1869 opened the first lodging establishment in what would later become the town of Ocean City. Mrs. Cropper’s sister, Mary B. Quillen, opened the Lankford Hotel on the Boardwalk in 1924, one year after The Shoreham.
Dr. and Mrs. Cropper expanded The Shoreham for the 1927 season, made additional improvements in 1928, including heated bathrooms, and enlarged the dining room in 1930. See illustration 3. The hotel was operated under the American plan, meaning the price of lodging included three meals a day, and was touted as “regularly catering to a refined list of guests.” Like other hotel operators in Ocean City, Mr. and Mrs. Cropper responded to the national economic depression of the 1930s by reducing their rates. In 1933, room rates were $3 to $5 a day, or $15 to $35 for a week’s stay; dinner was available for 75¢.
In March of 1935, Mr. and Mrs. Cropper entered into a contract to sell The Shoreham to John H. Farlow and his sister Nadine F. Harrison of Berlin for $40,000. John and Nadine, operating as “Farlow & Harrison”, took over management of the hotel that summer. A formal conveyance of the property was executed on October 22, 1936. In addition to running The Shoreham in Ocean City, the pair also briefly owned the Atlantic Hotel in Berlin from 1940 to 1941.
John and Nadine sold The Shoreham in 1944 to Shoreham Corporation, a company organized by Salisbury, Maryland businessmen Sidney Banks, Lee W. Insley and J. Wesley Nottingham. The spring of 1944 was an active time in Ocean City, with nine of the resort’s hotels, including The Shoreham, changing ownership. Mr. Banks promoted one of the employees at his hotel in Old Point Comfort, Virginia, Miss Lois Carmean, to the position of manager of the newly acquired Shoreham. Miss Carmean married G. Hale Harrison, the son of the late State Senator Orlando Harrison (and brother-in-law of one of the former owners, Nadine F. Harrison) on September 19, 1944. She would later open Harrison Hall, located on the Boardwalk at 15th Street, in 1951.
Mr. and Mrs. Lynn McCray took over management of The Shoreham in 1946 under a three-year management lease with the Shoreham Corporation. Mr. McCray, with his business partner Walter T. Onley, founder of the W. T. Onley Canning Company in Snow Hill, bought The Shoreham in 1949. The hotel was extensively remodeled and redecorated for the 1950 season, including the addition of more private baths. A soda fountain and snack bar were added in 1951.
McCray and Onley arranged a deal in 1953 with Baltimoreans William and Rose Lilly, buying the Hampton House property on the Boardwalk (between 4th Street and 5th Street) from the couple while simultaneously conveying The Shoreham hotel property to them. Mr. and Mrs. Lilly also owned the Greystone Cottages, located on the east side of Baltimore Avenue in the same block as The Shoreham. They operated The Shoreham for only three years, selling it to Carroll and Anna Benson, from Hydes, Maryland, in 1956. The new owners promoted the attractions of their hotel in this advertisement published in The Baltimore Sun on May 13, 1956:
Long known as the friendly family hotel we offer these at home features:
70 Bright, cheerful rooms
Mod. American or European Plan
Responsible baby sitters
Free Parking – Snack Bar
Convenient to Churches
Really your “Home Away from Home”
Mr. Benson organized American Touresorts, Inc., in 1959 and transferred ownership of The Shoreham to the new company. According to the company’s prospectus, “American Touresorts, Incorporated is a Maryland corporation owning and operating The Shoreham Hotel, Ocean City, Md., and proposing to acquire and operate additional hotels, resorts and tourist facilities along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.” The Salisbury Times provided this report on May 1, 1959:
The Shoreham Hotel, for many years the summer resort home of thousands of vacationers, has become a unit of American Touresorts, Inc., a Maryland corporation which has its principal office in The Shoreham.
The company plans extensive remodeling of The Shoreham, including installation of an elevator and the addition of public and guest rooms in the fall of 1959 … Carroll L. Benson, president of the new corporation, will continue as manager of The Shoreham. Mrs. Benson, the corporation’s vice president, is manager of the Florida operations from the Fort Lauderdale office.
Mr. Benson sold the company to Russell H. Cullen before the 1960 summer season. We don’t know how many hotel properties in addition to The Shoreham were owned by American Touresorts at that time. Mr. Cullen, a sales engineer for a large grinding wheel manufacturer in Indianapolis, and his family had spent a week’s vacation in Ocean City in 1958 “so the children could see the Atlantic Ocean”. He arranged to purchase The Hamilton, located on the north corner of 3rd Street and the Boardwalk, later that year. He also purchased the Seaview Hotel, located next door to The Hamilton, around the same time as he was acquiring American Touresorts.
Mr. Cullen quickly immersed himself in the business and civic affairs of his adopted town. He was elected president of the Chamber of Commerce, and ran in a three-man field for mayor in 1962, finishing second to the incumbent, Hugh T. Cropper. At The Shoreham, he expanded the snack bar into the “Dog House”, serving “The best in Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, Donuts, and Shakes” and the “Salt Cellar” below, featuring full course dinners.
The lower level restaurant wasn’t successful, and in 1963 Mr. Cullen permitted four teen-aged boys, including his nephew, Bill Butler, to lease the space to open the “Dulcimer Coffee House” for under-21 visitors. The arrangement only lasted a couple of years. Mr. Cullen was an outspoken critic of young men with the long hair that was fashionable in the 1960s. The Baltimore Sun reported this story on June 29, 1966:
If anyone wears long hair in Russell Cullen’s hotel, it’s going to be a woman.
Cullen, owner of the Shoreham Hotel at this beach resort, says he won’t permit young men with shoulder-length hair to trespass on his property. They’re too rowdy, he says.
Cullen’s edict prompted fifteen long-hairs, as they are known in the teen parlance of the surf set, to picket in front of his hotel Monday night [June 27]. Their signs read: “Unfair to long hair.”
Police dispersed the group. Police said the young men failed to obtain a parade permit.The long-hairs then charged they were victims of discrimination. Of course they are, Cullen said yesterday. “Yes, they are being discriminated against. There are some things you can discriminate against.”
In 1968, Mr. Cullen struck a deal with Ocean City real estate property manager Walter C. “Buck” Mann and his business associates to sell all of his Ocean City holdings, which included The Shoreham, The Hamilton, the Seaview and the recently acquired Greystone Cottages, to a new company called “Hamilton-Shoreham, Inc.” The deal unraveled after The Hamilton and the Seaview were destroyed in a fire on December 14, 1969. Mr. Mann took over American Touresorts (which still owned The Shoreham) shortly afterward, and Mr. Cullen, who had relocated to Florida before the fire, sold his other three properties in 1971.
Stanley and Anthony Janulewicz opened the Sazarac Pub/Dungeon in The Shoreham in 1969. They operated the pub until moving on in 1979 to open the Bayside Skillet on 77th Street. A series of businesses came and went in the bar space at The Shoreham, including Surf & Suds, Mugsy’s Speakeasy and McGee’s, before the present occupant, Shenanigan’s Irish Pub and Seafood House, opened in 1989.
Mr. Mann’s American Touresorts sold The Shoreham to B & G Coastal Enterprises, Inc. (Edward A. Burke and Harold Greenspan, principals) in 1987 for $1.925 million. A series of transactions in 2012 conveyed the property to the current owner, 309 Atlantic Avenue of OC, LLC, of which William A. Gibbs, Jr., and Raymond C. Shockley were the sole members.