Cape May Historic District

The City of Cape May sits at the south end of Cape May Peninsula which divides the Atlantic Ocean from the Delaware Bay. Cape May Point, about two miles west of the City of Cape May, borders the Bay, while Cape May City borders the Ocean. Cape Island Creek, a tidal "creek" and marsh, originally divided the site of the city from the rest of Cape May, but its southern end has long been covered with landfill. The Cape May Canal, built in 1942, now divides both Cape May City and Cape May Point from the rest of the peninsula. ==History of Cape May==

Cape May was first discovered by Europeans by Henry Hudson on August 28, 1609. He landed on the shore of Delaware Bay a few miles north of Cape May Point before returning to the Atlantic Ocean. Cornelius Mey explored the area further in 1621 for the Dutch West India Company and by May, 1630 Samuel Godyn and Samuel Blommaert bought land for the Dutch from Native Americans covering the southern four miles of the Cape. In 1632 the Dutch established a fishing and whaling settlement in the area, but by 1638 colonists from New England had moved in. By the 1660s the English gained control and Daniel Coxe, a London Quaker, organized a government in 1687. Early settlers worked in the lumber, shipbuilding, whaling, fishing and shellfish industries. A road along the coast built in 1796 helped establish the hamlet of Cape May. Southerners later became a large proportion of summer vacationers. The resort business in Cape May began to thrive when regular steamboat traffic on the Delaware River began after the War of 1812, carrying passengers from Philadelphia and New Castle, Delaware. Commodore Stephen Decatur made his summer home at the Atlantic Hotel about this time. The predecessor of the Congress Hall Hotel was opened in 1816 by Thomas Hughes. It took its current name in 1828, when Hughes was elected to Congress. In 1830 a visitor wrote that . Early visitors included Henry Clay in 1847, and possibly Abraham Lincoln in 1849. Serving Presidents who visited included Franklin Pierce (1855), James Buchanan (1858), Ulysses Grant (1873), Chester Arthur (1883), and Benjamin Harrison (1889). Harrison made Congress Hall his Summer White House. From the 1850s through the 1880s up to 3,000 visitors arrived each day during the summer season. Newport, Rhode Island, Saratoga Springs, New York and Long Branch, New Jersey were the town's main rivals in the summer resort business, as Cape May's reputation rose and fell with the whims of fashion. From about 1900-1920 larger bungalows and mansions were built, especially on Beach Avenue on the eastern end of town. Having lost its transportation advantage with the coming of the railroad and the automobile, Cape May fell out of fashion as a popular resort. Atlantic City became the popular New Jersey beach resort in the 1920s and in the 1950s and 1960s the automobile-oriented Wildwoods, just north of Cape May, became a strong competitor, with its own distinctive architecture. Architectural historians George E. Thomas and Carl Doebley list 100 significant buildings in their 1976 book Cape May, Queen of the Seaside Resorts: Its History and Architecture. ==Selected contributing properties==

Contributing properties in the district include the following. Construction dates may be approximate. T&D reference gives the reference number from George E. Thomas and Carl Doebley's book with Roman numerals indicating the more significant buildings, and Arabic numerals the less significant buildings. Both lists are ordered by approximate date of construction. HABS reference links to the building's page in the Historic American Buildings Survey at the Library of Congress. ==See also==