Abandoned and demolished in Atlantic City

Santa Rita Apartments, Atlantic City New Jersey

Date added: June 01, 2023 Categories:

Surrounded by the churches, clubs and institutions of Atlantic City's permanent community along Pacific Avenue, the Santa Rita Apartment brought modern, high-rise urban living to the resort town. The building is visually striking with its green copper bays and cornice outlining its strong, simple form. The building had added significance because for a time it was the tallest structure in the seashore resort, and for a long time was topped only by the oceanfront hotels. The size of the Santa Rita denotes another purpose, for by its size across the street from the boardwalk hotels, it marks the maturation of Atlantic City as a metropolis in its own right and no longer as just a resort extension of Philadelphia. It was this development that transformed the Atlantic City of the early twentieth century quite as much as the great boardwalk hotels. Finally, the Santa Rita was owned and developed by the Joseph Barstow family who were early developers and builders within the resort; by the end of the century, they had risen to positions of importance in the local community. With the completion of the Santa Rita, it became their family headquarters, marking the building as the premier residence of its day in Atlantic City.

The location of the Santa Rita at Pacific and South Carolina Avenues, situated amidst the resort's chief buildings of its permanent community attest to its importance. To the east at Pennsylvania Avenue stands Paul and Seymour Davis's Gothic Presbyterian church (1908), diagonally across the street is Walter Price's Quaker Meeting (1926) while Horace Trumbauer's YMCA is immediately next door to the west (1908, 1912). Further west are the chief buildings of the Catholic community: Frank Berry's Spanish designed Knights of Columbus (1926), and across the street, E. F Durang's handsome complex of St. Nicholas Church (1900) and parish buildings (1908). Together these form a row of considerable architectural pretension, using the important architects from Philadelphia to convey the newfound sophistication of the rapidly growing year-round population.

The turn of the century marked the transformation of Atlantic City from a village supporting a resort to a permanent metropolis. The city's population had more than doubled from 13,000 to 28,000 in the decade between 1890 and 1900 and nearly doubled again to 46,000 by 1910. Most of that population was housed not in single-family houses but rather in small apartments that with the better-known hotels, were the most important building types of the evolving resort. A cursory review of the Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builder's Guide shows that more than a dozen apartment houses were constructed between February and November of 1910. Most were typically of the walk-up type of three or four stories, containing a dozen or so apartments and occupying two or three house lots.

Against that scale, the Santa Rita is all the more remarkable, towering over the smaller buildings, and containing more than 100 apartments. In an era when the tallest hotels of the resort such as Price and McLanahan's first tower for the Traymore Hotel or the concrete Blenheim wing of the Marlborough/Blenheim reached only eight and nine Stories respectively, the Santa Rita's nine stories was epochal, offering the year-round community the experience of height. It was that novelty of life high above the ground that had only recently been celebrated in Henry Blake Fuller's novel, The Cliff Dwellers, which had been serialized in Harper's Weekly in 1893. That novel argued that great social changes were occurring in American society, and that a new modern lifestyle was evolving in which families could avoid the travails of cooking, household maintenance and the like by living in buildings in which those services were provided. When it opened in 1911, the Santa Rita was the first such modern apartment in Atlantic City.

The architect of the building, J. R. Ogden, was a local Atlantic City man, who like the owner, Joseph Barstow, had begun in the 1870s as a carpenter, shifted to being a contractor in the 1880s and by the end of the century was styling himself as an architect. The owner, Barstow had abandoned his contracting career at the turn-of-the-century and by 1889 was president of the Atlantic City Gas and Water Co. In that role, he was a major figure in the development of the city. Barstow himself acquired significant property holdings including the Santa Rita site which his family developed, operated and were among its first tenants. His architect had begun as a carpenter, then continued as a contractor, before finally taking the lofty title of architect. Though the major resort buildings had to reach the higher levels of taste of the urban centers so long as architecture remained rooted in the values of late nineteenth-century America, architects such as Ogden would have a place in Atlantic City, adapting contemporary taste to the local economy.

As architecture, the Santa Rita was one of the most up-to-date buildings of Atlantic City of its day, utilizing the spare vocabulary of recent Chicago design. Instead of using classical pilasters and columns to thematically articulate the exterior, the vertical bays gave the building the giant order of American commerce. That same spirit infused the choice of materials for the copper bays, which oxidized a brilliant green by the salt air causing the building to be one of the principal landmarks of Pacific Avenue. The Santa Rita also evokes the character of the most advanced resort architecture being designed by Price and McLanahan. In the Blenheim (1905) and the first wing of the Traymore (1906), bays were used to rhythmically articulate the elevation, establishing a modern historical style that spread across the typical buildings of Atlantic City.

Building Description

The Santa Rita Apartment house stands at the corner of South Carolina and Pacific Avenues in the midst of the principal architectural landmarks of the year-round community of Atlantic City. Unlike most of the city's apartment houses which were three or four-story walk-ups, this nine-story building towered over all but the two tallest hotels, making it one of the city's chief structures in its heyday. The building is distinguished by its vertical bands of copper bays at the corners and at points that subdivide the long South Carolina facade into thirds, and by its massive copper cornice. These are its chief ornament and gave the Santa Rita a striking presence that even now makes it a landmark in Atlantic City.

The Santa Rita occupies a plot that is fifty feet wide on Pacific Avenue and 150 feet along South Carolina Avenue, with its rear facade facing Memorial Street. The building fills its entire site on the first story but steps back on the west side above the second floor to assure light and air to the western apartments. Though the proportions are those of a slab, by the careful subdivision of the facade by its bays, the architect, J. R. Ogden, an Atlantic City resident, established a verticality of proportion that links the Santa Rita to the well-known progressive modern architecture of the Midwest.

The exterior is largely a diagram of function: the first story was devoted to retailing and restaurants and was set off by a cornice at the first story. The upper eight stories were devoted to flats with different room uses described by various window types. Living rooms are denoted by projecting bays while bedrooms and dining rooms are lighted by single windows set off by flush limestone lintels and slightly projecting sills that punctuate the orange-red brick walls. Windows are double-hung, one-over-one sash. On the west elevation, a less expensive purple brick is substituted for the finished brick of the main facade at the point where the facade steps back from the property line. Segmental brick arches above the window openings were substituted for the cut stone lintels on the same wall.

The main entrance to the apartments was placed in the center of the long east wall in the optimal position for efficient access to each unit. The door opens into a modest corridor leading to an elevator. This was the principal means of access to the apartments, but as an obligatory gesture to grandeur, and in case the elevator did not work, the corridor ended at the foot of the handsome iron stair that rises to landings on the exterior wall. The stair is of rolled steel with wrought iron balusters, cast iron newels, and wood handrails. In keeping with the evolving character of modern architecture, the steel is directly expressed by exposed rivets and bolts. The same directness of expression 1s apparent in the steel frame clad only in its plaster fireproofing and projecting unadorned by detail below the planes of the ceiling.

Above the first floor each stair landing opens into a corridor that runs longitudinally down the center of the building, providing access to the individual units. Unlike most modern apartment corridors, the architect established a rhythmic articulation along the length of the hall by treating the vertical elements of the steel frame as pilasters. Deep baseboards and a picture rail add finish to these connecting spaces.

The apartments vary in size and luxury depending on their orientation, with those that face on the main street fronts facing the ocean typically being than those on the rear. Each of the apartments share common features that reserve exterior walls for public character of the kitchens in the original plan with tiny "Pullman" sinks and stoves in one alcove and a separate niche for the refrigerator, both opening onto the corridor. Such kitchens had become popular in turn-of-the-century speculative New York apartment buildings, particularly those that served the upper classes and which contained restaurants that could cater the individual apartments. In later modifications to the buildings, second bedrooms were converted into kitchens, indicating a shift to a more middle-class clientele.

Detail is concentrated in the living rooms, which are invariably the largest spaces in each flat. Most feature a Projecting, polygonal bay lighted by three double-hung sash with ample sills and moldings cantilevered from the steel frame. Plaster console brackets applied to the base of the encased steel beams provide a hint of architecture as an expression of the luxury of the building. Though the apartments were generally similar, most elaboration is reserved for the corner units. There the corner bay projects as a five-sided alcove off the main parlor providing spectacular views up and down Atlantic City's chief avenue.

The building has been continuously altered and modernized over its entire history demonstrating both the importance of its location in the heart of the city and the adaptability of the original design. The most obvious alteration has been the cladding of the first-floor shop fronts and cornices with a modern metal skin, itself a continuation of the original technology of stamped sheet metal. The commercial spaces have been altered numerous times. The apartment levels and corridors are little changed with Original trim and partitions in most units. To meet fire codes, most of the paneled corridor doors have been replaced by solid core doors with steel frames.