Marlborough Blenheim Hotel

History

In 1900, Josiah White III bought a parcel of land between Ohio Avenue and Park Place on the Boardwalk, and built the Queen Anne style Marlborough House. The hotel was financially successful and, in 1905, he chose to expand. White hired Philadelphia architect Will Price of Price and McLanahan to design a new, separate tower to be called the Blenheim. "Blenheim" refers to Blenheim Palace in England, the ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill, a grandson of the Duke of Marlborough.

Recent hotel fires in and around Atlantic City, Price's recent experience of designing the all-concrete Jacob Reed store in Philadelphia, and a steel strike in the fall of 1905 influenced Price's choice of reinforced concrete for the tower. It opened in 1906.

It was not the first reinforced concrete hotel in the world, as French concrete pioneer François Hennebique had designed the Imperial Palace Hotel in Nice five years previously. But it was the largest reinforced concrete building in the world. The hotel’s Spanish and Moorish themes, capped off with its signature dome and chimneys, represented a step forward from other hotels that had a classically designed influence.

In 1916, Winston Churchill was a guest of the hotel.

In 1977 Reese Palley and local attorney and businessman Martin Blatt bought the Marlborough-Blenheim and planned to preserve the Blenheim half of the hotel, along with adjacent Dennis Hotel for his Park Place Casino. Palley was successful in getting the Blenheim part of the hotel placed on the National Register of Historic Buildings, while planning to raze the Marlborough to make way for a new modern hotel. Ten days later, he stepped aside when Bally Manufacturing purchased a controlling interest in the project. After Bally took control, they announced plans to raze the Marlborough-Blenheim and the adjacent Dennis Hotel, despite protests, to make way for the new "Bally's Park Place Casino and Hotel". However, in an effort to offset costs and get the casino opened as fast as they could they chose to keep the Dennis Hotel, which would serve as the temporary hotel for Bally's until a new tower was built.

Bally demolished the wood-framed Marlborough with the conventional wrecking ball. For the Blenheim the company hired Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) and Winzinger Incorporated of Hainesport New Jersey, which had taken down the Traymore Hotel, to implode the structure. A preservation group which had sought historic status for the building won a stay of execution for the Blenheim’s rotunda portion on the Boardwalk. It was separated from the rest of the hotel, which was imploded in the fall of 1978. Several months later its historic status was denied, the stay was lifted, and CDI finished the demolition January 4, 1979. It is not known if they sold the name Marlborough-Blenheim as well.

Bally's Park Place now stands at this location.

In culture

The hotel features prominently in the 1972 Bob Rafelson film The King of Marvin Gardens, starring Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern and Ellen Burstyn.

In the Garry Marshall film Beaches, a young Hillary Whitney stays with her family at the hotel, where she treats a young C. C. Bloom to chocolate sodas in the Garden Court. The scene was filmed at the Ambassador Hotel (Los Angeles).

In the HBO television show Boardwalk Empire, the fictionalized Nucky Thompson lives on the 8th floor of a Ritz-Carlton whose architecture is based on the Marlborough-Blenheim's, rather than that of the actual Ritz-Carlton in Atlantic City that the real Nucky Johnson had lived in. The Blenheim hotel is mentioned throughout the series.

A clip of the demolition of the main dome of the hotel is featured in the video for Bruce Springsteen's song "Atlantic City."