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Step Inside an Old Gothic Hotel of the Atlantic City Boardwalk

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Welcome back to Monochromes, a Friday mini-series wherein Curbed delves deep into the internet's photographic annals, resurfacing with an armful of old black-and-white photos of architecture and interior design. Have a find you want to share? Hit up the tipline; we'd love to hear from you.


These days, the swanky modern hotel casinos in Atlantic City, N.J., are constantly struggling to keep their doors open. But back in the early 1900s, the area was home to a host of premier boardwalk resorts. One of them, the Queen Anne-style Marlborough Hotel saw enough success that the property owner soon commissioned a major expansion, one that, upon completion in 1906, became the largest reinforced concrete building in the world. The resulting Marlborough-Blehnheim resort enjoyed gothic parlors full of arches, grand domed dining room and auditorium, halls of colonnades, and an abundance of hexagonally stacked fireplaces. The hotel, with a façade that inspired the "Ritz-Carlton" seen in the HBO show Boardwalk Empire, was completely demolished in 1978 to make room for the new Bally's Park Place Casino and Hotel, which still stands today. Take a throwback tour, below.

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· Marlborough Hotel [[Library of Congress' Gottscho-Schleisner Collection]
· All Monochromes posts [Curbed National]