OCEAN CITY – A local nonprofit is seeking grant funding to begin a restoration of Ocean City’s historic Henry Hotel.
The Worcester County Commissioners last week agreed to send a letter of support to the Maryland Historical Trust as a nonprofit dedicated to the restoration of the Henry Hotel seeks funding for restoration. Nancy Howard of the nonprofit Henry Hotel Foundation said the $250,000 grant would be the first step in bringing the historic hotel back to its former glory.
“There are several people who have said to me ‘if there’s any structure in Ocean City I want to see restored it’s the Henry Hotel,’” Howard said.
She said she’s received letters of support from numerous local agencies as the foundation moves forward with seeking grant funding. The nonprofit is asking for a $250,000 African American Heritage Preservation Program Grant from the Maryland Historical Trust. The funding would help the nonprofit arrange for a foundation to be added to the 19th century building.
“The building will have to be lifted, a foundation built, and the building put back down on it,” she said, adding that she’d discussed the project with the same company that moved the Ocean City Life-Saving Station Museum and the Tarry-A-While Guest House.
Eventually, the nonprofit hopes to turn the structure into a museum/learning center highlighting African American history in Ocean City.
“There isn’t anything like that in Ocean City,” Howard said.
It’s no secret the historic building has fallen into disrepair in recent years.
“The family still owns it but hasn’t used it since the 1990s,” Howard said. “The upper two floors are gutted. The first floor is not habitable.”
Because it’s a key part of Ocean City’s history, however, the Henry Hotel Foundation was created and is now working to identify grant funding to help in the restoration. Howard noted that though African Americans weren’t allowed to stay in Ocean City, they were responsible for many of the jobs that made Ocean City the vacation resort it was.
“Formerly known as ‘Henry’s Colored Hotel,’ the three-story, wood-shingled structured, was erected in the last decade of the 19th century and remains one of the oldest hotels in the city,” the letter of support from the Worcester County Commissioners reads. “More importantly, the Henry Hotel is the last remaining hotel that served black visitors to the ocean resort during the early to mid-20th century. Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Count Basie and Louis Armstrong were guests of the Henry Hotel in the days when black entertainers could perform in major hotel ballrooms, yet could not sleep in the hotels.”
According to local history provided by Howard, Charles T. Henry, a black businessman from Berlin, opened “Henry’s Colored Hotel” in 1927 in building he’d purchased from local fisherman Thomas Savage. The Henry Hotel and Charles’ other boarding house on Somerset Street were two of five establishments in Ocean City at that time catering exclusively to black seasonal workers and occasional black visitors.
Of the five buildings, only two, the Henry Hotel and a smaller boarding house on Somerset Street, are still standing.
While Henry’s widow continued operating the hotel after his death, it was eventually sold in the 1950s. Its last owner was Pearl Bonner, who operated the hotel until the 1990s. She died in 2003 and the hotel passed to her children.
The site was named an African American Heritage site on the Lower Eastern Shore in 2007.
For more information about the Henry Hotel Foundation’s efforts, email Howard at [email protected].
