Susan Selles Atlantic

Susan Selles Atlantic

Susan Selles Atlantic

Most of the grand Atlantic City hotels that survived Prohibition, the Depression, and two world wars are gone now: the Ambassador, the Traymore, the Chalfonte, the Marlborough-Blenheim. One notable exception is the regal Dennis Hotel. Now a part of Bally’s Atlantic City, the Dennis has once again become a landmark on the most famous Boardwalk in the world.

From Rooming House to the Dennis Hotel

Like many of the historic Atlantic City hotels, the Dennis had a humble beginning. William Dennis, a resident of Burlington, New Jersey, built himself a two-room wooden cottage on the corner of Pacific Avenue and Michigan Avenue. The year was 1860. Although he built it as his own private summer getaway, Mr. Dennis soon had a seemingly endless stream of relatives asking to use his cottage by the sea. To accommodate them, he eventually expanded his diminutive cottage into a 22-room boarding house. Perhaps tired of catering to his relatives, William Dennis sold the house to Joseph H. Borton in 1867.