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Cape May
| Article
# : |
10937 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1993 |
2,030 Words |
| Author
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Judith K. Cox.
Judith K. Cox writes on travel, arts, and fashion and resides
in Washington, D.C. |
As the nation's oldest seashore resort, with over eight hundred Victorian structures still standing. Cape May, New Jersey, is the jewel of the Jersey shore. Colored like variously frosted petits fours, the structures in the historic district, or "Victorian Village," read like a compendium of Victorian style.
Small gingerbread houses, dusted in filigreed carpenter's lace crafted to be unique to each house, stand beside rambling and elaborately towered and turreted Queen Anne mansions or squarely frontal Italianate houses with deep overhanging roofs supported by massive bracketing. Gothic revival houses feature steep roofs, off-center towers, sharp gables, and multilevels of decoration, while second empire French villas sport mansard roofs and unlikely wraparound porches.
In a town where the decoration is decorated, the beauty is in the details. To be fully appreciated, Cape May is best taken in during long slow walks that allow one's eyes to linger on the pieces of buildings: the appliqué, bargeboards, spandrels, pendants, and their whimsical and seemingly infinite combinations.
One of five cities so honored in the country, Cape May was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 for the largest collection of restored Victorian structures in the nation. Credit for this city's rebirth goes to its citizens, who, in the 1970s, launched programs in restoration and community improvement that continue to be instrumental in making Cape May unique.
Long before the railroad reached Cape May in 1868, long before steamboats brought summer visitors eager to try out the thrilling new experience of summer at the beach, the Lenape Indians and other mid-Jersey tribes had traveled here during the summer months to enjoy the mild climate and the abundant hunting and fishing.
Advertisements first appeared in the Philadelphia papers in the 1760s urging readers to "resort to" the southernmost tip of the Jersey shore, where the Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean; and from Philadelphia, Wilmington, and even New York and Washington, D.C., they came.
By its heyday in the nineteenth century, Cape May had fifty-seven hotels--including the Mount Vernon, the world's largest, which accommodated three thousand guests and provided all of them with hot and cold running water. So popular was the resort as the gathering place of the rich and famous that it became known
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