The area north of 10th Street was developed in the late 1920s at a time when the city limits ended at 15th Street. This quickly became the home of some of Ocean City’s elite hotels known for outstanding hospitality and exceptional dining.
The hotels pictured above are all gone now, victims of progress and an ever-increasing value of beachfront property. Shown are the Royalton (1927-2017) (today the site of the Monte Carlo Oceanfront), the Mayflower (1927-1986 and now the location of the Howard Johnson Oceanfront Plaza) and the Stephen Decatur (1931-1977 and currently the site of the Decatur House, a popular vacation condominium).
As motels became popular in the 1950s and later condos in the early ’70s the frame Boardwalk hotels of an earlier era were phased out. Today only a handful of those historic buildings remain in Ocean City.
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Postcard from Bunk Mann’s collection