A historic journey through Cape May and the Black Landmarks that were eventually listed on the National Register

Emlen Fisick was born into a wealthy family. He was progressive and well-educated, earning a doctorate in medicine, but he lived a comfortable life as a gentleman of leisure. In the late 19th century, he moved into his family’s vacation home in Cape May, an 18-room Gilded Age mansion.

Staff are needed to manage a nursing home of this size, and there are more staff than residents. Emlen Physick Estatea house museum where visitors can hear stories brought to life by actors in period costumes.

What many people don’t know is that Cape May became a refuge for freed slaves. The Phixick home became an employment opportunity for people like gardener Ottiel Howard, who overcame incredible odds to get here and even became the owner of a property that still stands today. Live-in cook Alice Johnson lived with the family for most of her adult life, even though she witnessed events like the burning of crosses by the Ku Klux Klan.

“If I could interview one person from the past, I think it wouldn’t be one of the Physicks, it would be Alice,” said historian Ben Riding, who wrote the script for the tour of the house. “Because she worked there for so long, she knew everything that went on in the house.”

Cape May was added to the National Register in 1976. But looking at the original Nomination Formally, the brief description of the Physick House mentions only his name and the famous architect who designed it, Frank Furness. The story of this house and many others in Cape May has long been incomplete.

“It really doesn’t reflect the entire history of the city and the history of African Americans that is so central to the urban fabric of Cape May,” said Cindy Mulock, executive director of the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May.

But that all changed this year. In March, the state’s Historic Sites Commission approved what was essentially a rewrite of the nomination form. The new 227-page document (the original was just 18 pages) expanded the boundaries of the existing historic district to include homes in the town’s historically black community, including Howard’s former home at 409 Pacific Street. It also included a black-only swimming spot called Grant Street Beach.

Since 1976, Cape May has become a model for historic preservation. It’s one of the best-preserved Victorian towns in the United States, thanks in large part to a woman named Carolyn Pitts. In 1967, when the Emlen Fisick House faced demolition as part of the city’s mayor’s urban renewal movement, Pitts used the National Historic Register, which had been created just a year earlier, to prevent it from happening. But the National Historic Register’s criteria at the time excluded many houses from Pitt’s list, including some that were inextricably linked to the history of the African Americans who had lived there since the mid-19th century.

People arriving in Cape May by bus would get off at the old train station and find themselves in the heart of a historic black community. It begins at the end of the railroad, which is no coincidence, because after the Civil War, many black people came to Cape May to work on the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad line that connected to Atlantic City. When that project was completed, railroad workers settled in the area around the station, and it became a thriving enclave.

In its heyday, the town had 88 black businesses, including music venues like Charlie’s Bar (now Collier’s Liquor Store) and lodging establishments like the Richardson Hotel. Today, there are only four black businesses, as many left town for college and never returned, according to Hampton Taylor, director of the Harriet Tubman Museum.

The Richardson Hotel, named after owner Harry Richardson, is a beautiful Second Empire-style building. While the inn was previously listed on the National Register, in the latest version it has been elevated to “significant contributing property,” meaning it’s a landmark of the highest importance.

Today, the lobby of the former tavern houses a New Age shop called the Guardian, owned by Suzan Senior, a local medium who has lived in Cape May for 23 years. She can tell you all about the wealthy ghosts who inhabit the building, including the apparition of a woman whose high heels she can hear clicking in the room above. But she has some stories about the living, too. When her husband, musician Geno White, was 11, he used to sneak up to the building’s stage door to watch black musicians playing in the blues lounge.

“On hot summer days, they would leave the back door open,” White said. “That’s when I first saw a Fender Stratocaster guitar—I was blown away by the sound of it.”

Perhaps the spiritual center of Cape May’s historically black community should be at the corner of Franklin and Lafayette streets. There are a few newly restored buildings here. The first is the Franklin Street School, which just celebrated its reopening as a library and community center this month. The school building was a segregated classroom until the state ordered schools to integrate in 1947. Around the corner is Macedonia Baptist Church, which still holds worship services — Taylor serves as a deacon — and fund-raising breakfasts.

The highlight was the Howell House, which houses the Harriet Tubman Museum. The museum is rich in collections and the experience is comprehensive. It is a must-see. The curator has collected artifacts such as 17th century slave shackles and Victorian African-American dolls. It covers important chapters of history from the Atlantic slave trade to the Underground Railroad and the post-Civil War period. But what I really enjoyed was its exhibition on Cape May’s local history, which honors all the local heroes who may not have a house museum to their name but bravely fought to make this town what it is today.

Take Amelia Hampton. As in many cities across the country, urban renewal began in Cape May’s black neighborhoods. The destruction of this history is evident all along Lafayette Street. Only a few Victorian homes and churches survived. But they survived not only thanks to Pitts, but also thanks to the resistance of local black residents.

One of the most fascinating stories of resistance to urban renewal involves the owner of the Stephen Smith House, Hampton. Smith was a self-liberated slave who became one of the wealthiest African Americans in the United States and a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Unwilling to yield to pressure from the local mayor to hand over the house, Hampton and her husband, a newspaper editor, sent a telegram to then-President Lyndon Johnson, who actually telegraphed her back.

“The president contacted the city of Cape May and said, ‘If you don’t leave Hampton alone, I’m going to cut off your federal funding,'” Taylor said. “Who would have thought the president would respond? But that’s what happened.”