It wasn’t exactly Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but the crowds on the streets of Cape May were so large at midnight on the New Year’s Eve leading into the 20th century that there was high optimism a comeback was on the way for Cape May. Some newspapers went so far as to say that never in Cape May’s history had so many people been on the streets at the witching hour.

Three years earlier in 1897, seeing the need for promotion of the resort, the city formed a Board of Trade to make it all happen in the face of growing competition from other resorts, not the least of which were the nearby Wildwoods and Atlantic City. The Board of Trade was tantamount to today’s tourism commissions in the Wildwoods, which promote and sponsor events for their municipalities.

Additional cause for optimism occurred when a steamship line opened between Cape May and Lewes. This one, unlike today’s ferry line, actually anchored in Cape May at the Iron Pier instead of in Lower Township as the current ferry does. The 1900 version, a steamer called New Bruinswick, was called The Queen Anne Connection because it linked with the Queen Anne Railroad that traveled the rails from Baltimore.

This, locals enthused, would mean a return to the pre Civil War glory days when southerners flocked to then-named Cape Island to enjoy its therapeutic and other advantages.

But there was even more optimism for the future of Cape May and it came all the way from Pittsburgh. His name was William Flinn, whom The New York Times listed as the richest of the Steel City’s coal, steel and oil millionaires.

Flinn, a powerful l Pennsylvania Republican who held the position of state senator, sensed the potential in Cape May and teamed with Frank Edwards of Bristol, and the usual number from Philadelphia, and they formed the East Cape May Real Estate Company which later was to be renamed the Cape May Real Estate Company.

Their plans were grandiose. The master idea was to develop the marshland from Sewell’s Pont to Madison Avenue, a section known as Poverty Beach, and sell 7,500 lots and build two magnificent hotels. This, they thought, would be an answer to Newport in Rhode Island, long considered a tourism rival of Cape May.

Once completed, their plan would produce a modern city with connections to the biggest railroads and, even more important, a new harbor matching the ports of New York to the north and Philadelphia to the west. An extension of the Boardwalk and a seawall were also in the works.

Setting up offices in Cape May, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the entrepreneurs, called “The Pittsburgh Syndicate” by some locals, started with capital stock totaling $750,000 but they tried to convince the city to underwrite improvements in the area east of Madison Avenue. That’s when protests began from some residents who felt it would result in higher taxes. Eventually, they arrived at a compromise in which the Cape May Real Estate Company would pay one-third of the cost of the extension and seawall not to exceed $50,000 and would pay for half of the cost of sewer improvements.

So now the stage was set for the big comeback. The promoters brought in what they called “five monster dredges” to create the new harbor and fill the land. One of them was aptly named “Pittsburgh,” its name no doubt encouraged by the home of one of the money men.

This was in 1903 and Cape May had never seen anything quite like this group of vessels at work, so the opportunist entrepreneurs decided to make them a marketing attraction. They scheduled daily train trips to the city so the visitors could watch the “monster dredges” in action and, not so incidentally, become possible investors in this new venture that would challenge, if not necessarily the world, certainly the East Coast of the United States.

Two of those trips brought to the city prospective land buyers and at one of them they were shown the sewage plant under construction, the “Pittsburgh” in action after it was christened and watercolor drawings of this magnificent hotel that was to be built. They were fed at Congress Hal just so they wouldn’t leave on empty stomachs.

The start of the project was such a big event that all business stopped between 11:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. so everyone in the city could turn out to see the birth of the harbor.

Everything was moving along nicely by 1904, it appeared, including the sewage disposal plant. The following year work began on what was initially called the Hotel Cape May. The new Cape May Automobile Club gave the project a boost by staging automobile races on the beach in front of the hotel while it was under construction. Henry Ford and Louis Chevrolet, yet to be world famous, raced along the strand between Madison Avenue and Sewell Point. Optimism was supreme, at least on the surface.

But, to paraphrase Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice and entrepreneurs oft go berserk. It came to light that there were construction problems and labor disputes and people were stealing building materials which delayed the final construction of the hotel until 1908. Its construction cost more than doubled that which was projected.

Worse still, the Cape May Real Estate Company, once lauded as well stocked as maybe the Bank of London, was on the verge of sinking financially into bankruptcy. And the proud “Pittsburgh,” which tourists had been wooed to watch in action in its earlier days, went down when a large rock was sucked into its suction pipe and destroyed the 12-foot pump. Water poured into the dredge and its eight man crew escaped as the dredge descended to the water’s depth.

The hotel finally opened in 1908, but it came to symbolize the entire project that started optimistically, was steady for a while and then turned to frustration and, ultimately in the years to come, to disappointment.

(Next week: The grand hotel that lost its grandeur.)

(Some of the information in this article was researched at the reference department of the Cape May County Library in Court House and in the book, “The Summer City By The Sea, Cape May, New Jersey,” by Emil R. Salvini.)