A Railroad, Walt Whitman, Sand and the First Boardwalk: How Atlantic City became America's Middle Class Playground
In 1850 local resident Dr. Jonathan Pitney began to promote the idea of Absecon Island, located just off southern New Jersey’s coast, as an ideal seaside medical retreat for many of his patients who suffered from various ailments, everything ranging from tuberculosis to nervous breakdowns. Pitney extolled the healing properties of ocean air and saltwater to all who would listen, and by 1853 Pitney along with civil engineer Richard Osborne, who would be in charge of the building’s design and construction, were able to successfully pitch the idea of building a major seaside resort on Absecon Island in New Jersey to influential financiers and politicians. Within a year of the resort’s construction Philadelphia politicians and railroad investors were persuaded enough by Pitney, Osborne and other New Jersey lobbyists to finance a railway that linked the City of Brotherly Love directly with the Jersey Shore and traversed the whole of the Garden State. On July 4, 1854 by charter o...