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Cape May By Nancy and Richard Woodworth Bed and breakfast as an American phenomenon got its start in Cape May. It also has been elevated here to its highest form. Tom and Sue Carroll are credited with launching the phenomenon in the early 1970s when they turned a house on Jackson Street into a Victorian B&B in this most Victorian of towns. The registered National Historic Landmark community has since spawned about 100 more B&Bs. And entrepreneurs in what they call the B&B capital of the United States host seminars for prospective innkeepers from across the country. The phenomenon locally was raised to high art through formal teas, exotic breakfasts and even B&B house tours. Lately, some of the inns’ brochures have become state-of-the-art and as showy as the rest of the B&B experience here. In the 19th century, America’s first seaside resort was the playground for no fewer than five presidents, and Benjamin Harrison made Cape May his summer White House. Less than a century later, it was down at the heels when citizens banded together to save the landmark Emlen Physick House from demolition. Thus was born the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts (MAC), a community dynamo that not only promotes the arts but also restores structures, stages tours and sponsors events. Thanks to MAC, Cape May seems to be a series of festivals all year long, from Crafts in the Winter to a Christmas Candlelight House Tour. Cape May’s celebrated Victorian Week is now an annual ten-day extravaganza in October. The year-round population of 4,800 swells
many-fold in the summer in this locale at the southern end of a
peninsula, a point actually below the Mason-Dixon Line, where the
Atlantic Ocean meets the Delaware Bay. Visitors come to ogle the largest
collection of authentic Victorian structures in the country, to relax on
the beaches and enjoy the wildlife, including some of the East’s best
bird watching. At the heart of it all are the inns and B&Bs, an
integral part of the Cape May experience. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places / Mid-Atlantic, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2003. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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