Groff for T he Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia)īefore Disneyland, Atlantic City was the first great middle-class resort in the nation, especially the Philadelphia region.

Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You BackĮssay The Atlantic City Boardwalk, introduced in 1870, became the city’s signature attraction.

On one end of the casino there's a comfortable food court with outposts of Dunkin' Donuts, Famiglia Pizza, Häagen-Dazs, Ruby's Dinette, and Soup Man and up towards the front, right in the middle of the casino floor, there's a nice circular bar called 5 O'Clock Somewhere, specializing in fun cocktails. We stayed in the Rendezvous Tower for a couple nights, and it offers large, quiet rooms with comfortable beds and large marble bathrooms (as well as a surprisingly large in-room dining menu), with easy access to the 100,000-square-foot casino floor. With the closure of neighboring casinos Taj Mahal and Showboat, there aren't currently any other large casino-hotels of this stripe on this end of the boardwalk, and Resorts is taking advantage of the relative isolation.

So what would a visit today offer? Plenty. The 399-room Rendezvous Tower was built onto the back of the structure in 2004, the entire property was renovated to incorporate a Roaring '20s theme in 2010, and it was taken over by its current owner, the Mohegan Sun Tribal Gaming Authority (the same owners as Connecticut's Mohegan Sun), in 2012. outside of Nevada, and during its first weeks in business, gamblers sometimes waited hours for an opportunity to roll the dice (The very first legal slot machine in Atlantic City's history is on display just off the casino floor). The building was acquired by Resorts International in 1976, and converted into a casino-hotel just in time for the legalization of gambling in the city in fact, it was the very first legal casino in the U.S.

It was a glamorous destination, and was connected to another, smaller hotel (since demolished) across the street called the Chalfonte the resulting complex was the city's largest hotel by capacity at the time. The building that makes up the core of Resorts was constructed back in the 1920s, and was originally called Haddon Hall.

Atlantic city boardwalk casino histort