Marlborough Blenheim Hotel

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The Marlborough-Blenheim was a hotel and resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Begun as the Marlborough House in 1901, it was expanded in 1906 with the Bleinheim Hotel being built. It was one of the city's premiere resorts, however, like Atlantic CIty itself the hotel declined in popularity during the 1960s. It was eventually bought up by casino operators and demolished in 1979.

[edit] Beginnings

The Marlborough Blenheim was begun like most Atlantic City resorts, as a modest boarding house. In 1901 Josiah White III and his son John bought a parcel of land located at Ohio Avenue and the Boardwalk that housed the Sacred Heart Academy. Tearing it down they opened up the Marlborough House the following year. Named for the Prince of Wales, it was designed by renowned architect William Lightfoot Price. The Marlborough was designed in a Queen Anne-style, giving a unique appearance on the Boardwalk. The hotel also had the unique distinction of offering its guest indoor hot and cold running saltwater.

[edit] Expansion into the Blenheim

In 1902 the Marlborough's neighbor, the Children's Seashore House, moved to Richmond Avenue in Atlantic City. The empty property was bought up by an amusement company which erected a roller coaster on the site. The coaster became an unwelcomed attraction for the Marlborough guest so in 1905 the White family acquired the site and decided to expand their hotel. Retaining Price's firm Price and McLanahan, the Whites decided to build the Blenheim. Price made a pioneering engineering statement by using famed inventor, Thomas Alva Edison's, new innovation of reinforced concrete in the hotel's construction. The Blenheim's Spanish or Moorish theme, along with its signature dome and chimneys, represented a distinct step forward from earlier, classically-influenced, building designs. It was also the Boardwalk's first "fireproof" hotel and the first to feature a private bath in each room. The Marlborough-Blenheim complex was a Boardwalk centerpiece for decades, and the White family remained influential. Charles White, one of John's brothers who helped run the hotel, served as mayor of Atlantic City and a state senator. The hotel would also convinced Josiah White's cousin, Daniel White, to expand his Traymore Hotel, which would expand into a monstrous hotel in 1915.

[edit] Success, Decline, and Current Status

The hotel was one of the city's most popular resorts well into the 1960s. In 1960, the Marlborough-Blenheim added motel wings, conference rooms, and a new pool as its operator, Josiah White IV, continued to run it with the same determination as his grandfather. However, by this point Atlantic City was spiraling downward in to a long economic decline. Poverty, crime, along with the counterculture of the sixties scared away the middle class tourists, who opted to go to other resorts. Nonetheless the White family continued to keep the hotel in good condition, unlike other resorts in the city, such as the Traymore, which were closed and torn down. They made a strong effort to retain the tourists who still came to the city.

In 1972 the Marlborough-Blenheim became the setting of the Bob Rafeleson film, The King of Marvin Gardens, which starred Jack Nicholson and Ellen Burstyn. The film, however, could not hide the fact that Atlantic City was suffering from severe urban blight.

In 1976 New Jersey passed the referendum that legalized gambling in Atlantic City. It seemed to promise brighter days for the hotels. In 1977 the White's sold the hotel to Reese Palley, who had also bought the adjacent Dennis Hotel. Palley announced plans to preserve the Dennis and Blenheim half of the hotel and to replace the Marlborough with a modern 750-room casino hotel. Palley succeeded in having the Blenheim placed on the National Register of Historic Buildings (which would translate into tax savings of over $1 million a year). However, Palley steeped away from the project in 1978, selling the hotel to Park Place Entertainemnt which announced plans to build Ballys Park Place on the site. Park Place switched architects and announced plans to raze the Marlborough, Blenheim, and the adjacent Dennis Hotel to build a sprawling "Park Place casino hotel," which was to feature an octagonal 385-foot hotel tower. Preservationists were aghast, but Bally's cited the difficulties of bringing the old structures up to code. Bally's, in an effort to save costs, chose to keep the older yet less historically significant Dennis while consigning the Blenheim to implosion; it and the Marlborough fell victim to progress in 1979. On December 30, 1979 Bally's Park Place opened as a 51,000 square-foot casino complex tacked onto the renovated Dennis Hotel, becoming the city's third casino hotel. Eventually in 1989 Bally's added its hotel tower, and the casino has outgrown its Park Place roots, adding the Wild Wild West casino and absorbing the Claridge Hotel and Casino and taking the name Bally's Atlantic City.

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