By James FitzPatrick
Contributing Writer
There will be a once-in-a- lifetime celebration in Ocean City Nov. 18 when the Flanders Hotel commemorates its 100th birthday.
The famed hotel, located at 11th Street and the Boardwalk, will play host to a gala event reflecting the style and attention to detail befitting a National Historic Landmark hotel built in the 1920s.
The elegant affair will feature antique cars and boats from the era, period-themed decor, and bellmen at the door. Guests can expect carving stations, a raw seafood bar, and fancy desserts. There will be a high tea event the day after, with high teas planned all summer long leading up to the gala.
The main event will be a ticketed, semi-formal with period costumes optional. Plans include partnering with the Ocean City Historical Museum and the Ocean City Pops.
“We’re going to really roll out the red carpet on this,” said Peter Voudouris, president of the Flanders Hotel Condominium Association and director of hotel and banquet operations.
Flanders Today
Starting in the mid-1990s, the Flanders was transformed from a 232-room hotel to a condominium hotel. It includes 117 luxury multi-room suites, each with private bedrooms and ranging in size from 625 to 2,400 square feet.
As a condo hotel, owners are not permitted to stay for more than 120 consecutive days or more than 200 days in any 365-day period, Voudouris said.
While there are other condo-hotels in Ocean City, Voudouris said the nine-story landmark building is the most complete with the largest pool in Ocean City, a coffee shop, shopping, a salon, spa, a fitness center, and a 20,000-square-foot banquet facility.
The venue hosts numerous events including more than 60 weddings a year, but also hosts school events, religious groups, even a reunion for owners of Porsche automobiles.
The Flanders gets four out of five stars on TripAdvisor. He gives credit to his staff, especially his assistant manager Tiffany Sterling for the high rating. Full-time staff is about 60, increasing to about 125 in-season.
He said the hotel has done considerable renovating leading up to the anniversary to the ballrooms, the second-floor bathrooms, the lobbies, and Emily’s Ocean Room Restaurant, with the design work all overseen by his wife, Arlene.
How It Started
The Flanders was willed into existence by a coalition of business and civic leaders who believed that Ocean City needed a first-class, modern hotel to be competitive.
The project began in 1922 when the Ocean City Chamber of Commerce saw a need to build something to compete with Atlantic City. The tourism and real estate markets were growing fast as rail connections were improving and a new bridge over the Delaware River was under construction.
Ocean City business leaders saw the tourism that Atlantic City was able to generate with modern hotels and wanted a slice of the pie, while staying true to the conservative, religious, alcohol-free values of America’s Greatest Family Resort.
The Ocean City Chamber of Commerce created the Ocean Front Hotel Corporation (OFHC) composed of 24 business and civic leaders who sought support from local government and the general public to raise funding and sell stock to build the 232-room hotel.
The Players
The OFHC brought in some accomplished people to make the Flanders happen.
The architect was Vivian B. Smith, an Ocean City native and OCHS graduate who studied in Philadelphia before returning to the Jersey Shore.
He opened his own practice in Atlantic City in 1910, designing a number of well-known local structures including Ocean City City Hall at Ninth and Asbury. Built in 1915, it’s also listed on the National Register. Other structures credited to Smith include the Troy and Oxford Avenue schools in Ventnor, and the Breakers Hotel in Ocean City.
The Flanders design, historians say, was inspired by Atlantic City’s Blenheim Hotel with the inclusion of terracotta decorative sculptures and a solarium annex.
“After the Flanders, Smith designed or assisted with the design of other beloved Ocean City landmarks like a new high school in 1924 and the Music Pier in 1929, arguably becoming the most important architect in Ocean City’s history,” according to the National Register of Historic Places.
Brought in to run the hotel was J. Howard Slocum, whose resume included overseeing the Greenbrier resort hotel in White Sulphur Springs, WV, and the Marie Antoinette New York City.
Slocum set high standards for hospitality and service at the hotel, and was known for hiring more help than the competition, creating a standard of service that other hotels tried to emulate.
Opening Day
The Flanders, which was named to commemorate a famous World War I battlefield in Belgium, was neither complete nor fully financed when the doors opened on a rainy Saturday July 23, 1923 to host a celebration dinner for 400.
Hoteliers from New York, Philadelphia, and Atlantic City came to inspect what Ocean City had accomplished and was still working on. The hotel was expected to “appeal to a new class of people,” according to an account in the Aug. 4, 1923 Ocean City Ledger.
The hotel which was projected to cost $1.2 million, but actually cost $1.447 million, the account reported.
Slocum is referred to as the one man who “made this hotel possible,” the paper reported. “Mr. Slocum said that one year ago, they started their campaign for funds. They said they could open the Flanders June 28. They were not far off.”
An editorial raved: “Inside the Flanders one can scarcely imagine himself in Ocean City. The general appearance of the interior is such as to make one feel that he is in one of the great hotels in New York, Philadelphia, or Atlantic City.”
A New Way of Building
The Flanders was unlike anything Ocean City had seen before. Contrary to the wooden Victorian hotels that came before, which typically were no more than four stories tall and made of wood, the hotel was eight stories, built of concrete and steel, and considered fireproof.
“In Ocean City, there were six or 10 huge wood frame hotels, but eventually they got torn down or burnt down over the years,” said John Loeper of the Ocean City Historical Museum, calling the Flanders, “the grand old lady of Ocean City.” Its creation was an achievement.
Trial By Fire
Its fire-resistant design served the Flanders well when it stood mostly unscathed after a fire destroyed more than 30 boardwak buildings, including the Hippodrome Pier on Oct. 11 1927.
The city-wide disaster proved to be an opportunity for the Flanders. When the boardwalk was reconstructed, it was half a block closer to the ocean, leaving space between the hotel and the boardwalk. OFHC and Slocum decided to build an extension from the main boardwalk to the hotel and develop the space in between.
Three new salt water pools were opened in July 1929: an Olympic-size pool, a diving pool, and a children’s pool. The hotel already had a 20-by-55 pool which was used for guests only.
“The salt water pools were open to the public and soon became the most popular attraction in Ocean City,” according to the history posted on theflandershotel.com.
At night, local and regional swim meets were held. Water shows were added that featured the Ocean City Beach Patrol and Olympic swimmer and actor, Johnny Weismuller.
Events at the pool complex became so popular that the Flanders’ management lined the main pool with bleachers to accommodate the onlookers.
After the Crash
After the stock market crash of 1929 and during the Great Depression, the Flanders suffered significant losses. The Ocean Front Hotel Corporation eventually sold the Flanders to Elwood Kirkman, a wealthy banker and lawyer from Atlantic City.
Despite the challenges of the Depression, the Flanders remained true to its standards, even welcoming celebrities including Vice President Charles Curtis, the Lit Brothers department store magnates, cartoonist Al Capp, Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly.
After World War II as the economy improved the Flanders continued operating as a resort. Even as the first motels appeared in the 1950s, the Flanders maintained its standards for service under Kirkman’s watch, fully staffing the pools and training numerous children and adults how to swim each summer. It also held important events like the 1950 Miss New Jersey Pageant and in 1954 the Diamond Jubilee Water Show.
The Fall and Rise
The fortunes of the Flanders took a turn for the worse in 1966 when the Port-O-Call Hotel and Motor Inn opened. The smaller, more modern hotel proved to be tough competition and ushered in an era of hotel demolitions that took down iconic hotels the Delaware, the Breakers, the Lincoln, the Illinois, the Strand, and the Colonial hotels.
The Flanders faced financial difficulties. High maintenance costs led to the permanent closure of its large pools on Labor Day 1978. The one acre pool lot remained vacant until the early 1990s when the Simpson Family built Playland. After having its worst financial year ever in 1991, a sheriff sale was held in February 1993. After selling off portions of the business it closed in 1995.
James Dwyer bought the Flanders in early 1996 and spent more than $12 million renovating it and turning the 232 rooms into 95 condo units. But he was charged with fraud in 2004.
Voudouris got involved in 2004 when he and his wife purchased two oceanfront units. He has been association president since 2005.
Since then he has battled to get financing to not only make repairs and improvements, but buy back portions of the business that were sold off.
Things began feeling better in 2010.
“We were able to purchase back the banquet center and the adjacent parking lot. By buying that banquet center we were able to get a second loan.”
He said the important thing for people to know about the Flanders is they are always tweaking and trying to make things better.
“We want to make sure the Flanders is here for all the memories and people that had memories here,” Voudouris said. “I think our goal is to continue to upgrade the facility, increase our amenities, and continue to make it a memory that people will always remember passed down from generation to generation.”
Copyeditor and Contributing Writer James FitzPatrick has been a community journalist in Atlantic and Cape May counties for more than 30 years, including 20 years as editor of The Current Newspapers. He lives in Hammonton.
