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Congress Hall (Cape May hotel)

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Coordinates: 38°55′53″N 74°55′27″W / 38.9314°N 74.9243°W / 38.9314; -74.9243
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Congress Hall
Map
General information
Location251 Beach Avenue, Cape May, New Jersey, USA
Opening1816 (rebuilt 1879)
Website
caperesorts.com/congress-hall/

Congress Hall is a historic hotel in Cape May, Cape May County, New Jersey, United States, occupying a city block bordered on the south by Beach Avenue and on the east by Washington Street Mall. It is a contributing building in the Cape May National Historic District.[1]

Congress Hall was first constructed in 1816 as a wooden boarding house for guests to the new seaside resort of Cape May; and the proprietor, Thomas H. Hughes, called it "The Big House." Locals, thinking it too big to be successful, called it "Tommy's Folly."[2][3] In 1828, when Hughes was elected to the House of Representatives, he changed the name of the hotel to Congress Hall. It burned to the ground in Cape May's Great Fire of 1878, but within a year, its owners had rebuilt the hotel in brick in an effort to convince leery prospective guests that the building was fireproof.[4]

While serving as President of the United States, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Harrison vacationed at Congress Hall, and Harrison made Congress Hall his official Summer White House, becoming the center of state business for several months each year.[5] John Philip Sousa regularly visited Congress Hall with the United States Marine Band and composed the "Congress Hall March", which he conducted on its lawn in the summer of 1882.[6]

A Stroll along Beach Avenue, Cape May, New Jersey video (3:35)

During the 20th century, the Cape May seafront deteriorated, with tourists heading to other shore resorts.[7][8] In 1968, Congress Hall was purchased by the Rev. Carl McIntire and became part of his Cape May Bible Conference. McIntire's possession of the property preserved the hotel during a period in which many Victorian-era beachfront hotels were demolished for the value of their land.[9]

With the decline of the Bible Conference, Congress Hall fell into a state of disrepair,[10] with the hotel closing in 1992, though retail space in the building remained in use. The property was partially restored under the guidance of Curtis Bashaw, McIntire's grandson, a $22 million restoration began in 1995 and completed in 2002.[11] Congress Hall is a resort hotel and part of the Cape Resorts family of hotels.

Bashaw supplies the hotel and many of its restaurants with pork, eggs and vegetables from his 73-acre (30 ha) Beach Plum Farm in West Cape May, New Jersey.[12]

  • Congress Hotel from the sea
    Congress Hotel from the sea
  • Congress Hall in 1870
    Congress Hall in 1870

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Pitts, Carolyn (1976). "NRHP Nomination, Cape May Historic District" (PDF). National Register of Historic Places. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
  2. ^ Yevish, I. The Ironmaker, p. 195. I. Yevish Books, 1993. ISBN 9780962633065. Accessed October 9, 2024. There were he knew, regeularly scheduled steamboat trips for vacationers, and a stage between Philadelphia and Cape May had been in operation for years. 'Tommy's Folly', as Congress Hall had been known -- even the Mansion House -- was making money hand over fist."
  3. ^ "History.", Congress Hall, Cape May, New Jersey. Accessed October 9, 2024.
  4. ^ Dreyfuss, Bob. "The Ghosts of Congress Hall", Cape May Magazine, June 2016. Accessed October 9, 2024. "Built in 1816, Congress Hall burned down two years later. Its replacement—larger and more magnificent—underwent a series of expansions, including the addition of one entire wing, and it lasted exactly 60 years, until the Great Fire of 1878 reduced much of central Cape May to a charred pile of rubble. The third version—whose builders, the Knights, conspicuously advertised to apprehensive vacationers as having been rebuilt out of fireproof brick, not wood!—went up in 1879."
  5. ^ Swoyer, George. "The Heart of Cape May: A Presidential Retreat", Washington Street Mall, March 1, 2023. Accessed October 9, 2024. "The president who truly made Cape May the Summer White House was Benjamin Harrison. Harrison first came to Cape May on the invitation of Philadelphia businessman John Wanamaker, who was a big supporter of Harrison."
  6. ^ Farnan, Paul. "Pillars and Presidents", Cape May Magazine, Mid-Summer 2022. Accessed October 9, 2024. "Around the same time, John Phillip Sousa, American composer/conductor known for his military marches during the late Romantic era, was a regular visitor of Congress Hall with the U.S. Marine Band. Here, Sousa composed the 'Congress Hall March' and debuted it to an audience on the sprawling front lawn of the hotel during the summer of 1882."
  7. ^ Miller, Ben. "The Fight to Preserve Cape May", DiscoverNJHistory.org. Accessed October 9, 2024. "By the late 1950s and early 1960s, Cape May had lost its luster and many of the city’s old Victorian and Colonial homes were in a state of disrepair. Local residents were struggling to make ends meet, so much so that some had taken to tearing up the floor boards in their homes to burn for heat in the winter. Tourism had sharply declined as visitors cast aside the Cape in favor of more modern resorts like Wildwood and Ocean City."
  8. ^ Campbell, Philippa. "Then and Now: The Impact of Urban Renewal", CapeMay.com, May 1, 2013. Accessed October 9, 2024. "First, large houses were built by wealthy out-of-town families who needed space for their families and servants. Then, various events occurred such as the 1929 depression which resulted in these properties being taken over by people with more moderate incomes who could not afford to maintain them. New owners divided once single family properties into multiple rooms and apartments for summer rental. Hard use by renters contributed to ongoing deterioration right up until the 1960s when summer visitors were drawn to new, modern motel rooms."
  9. ^ Strauss, Robert. "Down the Shore; For a Preacher's Son, Resurrection", The New York Times, June 16, 2002. Accessed October 9, 2024. "This seems hardly what Mr. Bashaw's fire-and-brimstone grandfather, the late Rev. Carl McIntire, had in mind for Congress Hall. After all, from 1968 until the early 1990's, Mr. McIntire held his Cape May Bible Conference at Congress Hall."
  10. ^ Plowman, Edward E. "Carl McIntire: On the Move from Cape to Cape", Christianity Today, August 17, 1979. Accessed October 9, 2024. "Farther down the beach Congress Hall—McIntire’s most modern conference property in Cape May—was unable to be used for guests, because of building code deficiencies. Across the street from Congress Hall lay the charred remains of another McIntire property, the vintage Victorian-style Windsor Hotel, torched by a still-unknown arsonist only weeks earlier."
  11. ^ Moore, Lyford M. "Ex-employee buys, restores old hotel to its former glory Congress Hall to reopen in Cape May after $22M spent on renovations", Daily Record, May 25, 2002. Accessed October 9, 2024, via Newspapers.com. "When Curtis Bashaw and a partner bought Cape May's aging Congress Hall in 1995 and announced plans to spend $22 million on its restoration, people rolled their eyes.... He lived and worked there when he was 17, was an assistant manager there through most of the 1980s and is the grandson of one of its former owners, the late Rev. Carl McIntire. On Friday, the once-proud hotel will reopen to the public after 18 months of renovation.... The hotel closed in 1992, though several shops housed in the building remained open until 1998."
  12. ^ Distefano, Joseph N. "Feeding the Shore Curtis Bashaw supplies Cape May with food from his farm.", The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 31, 2015. Accessed October 9, 2024, via Newspapers.com. "People in Cape May know that real estate developer Curtis Bashaw, 55, launched his Jersey Shore hotel and restaurant business in the early 1990s, with a boost from the legacy of his grandfather the Rev. Carl McIntire.... Eight years ago, he bought 62 sandy loam acres he calls Beach Plum Farm, a mile and a half by bicycle west of Cape Resorts' flagship Congress Hotel. He's moved the pigs to a second, 11-acre location and plans to add 80 acres nearby next year.... It supplies all of the pork and eggs and more or less than half (depending on the season) of the greens, roots, fruits, and herbs for Cape Resorts' Blue Pig Tavern at Congress Hall, Ebbitt Room at the Virginia, the Rusty Nail at the Beach Shack, and at Louisa's, the restaurant run by Bashaw's domestic partner Will Riccio, this summer."

Further reading

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Congress Hall (Cape May, New Jersey).

38°55′53″N 74°55′27″W / 38.9314°N 74.9243°W / 38.9314; -74.9243

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