Mid Atlantic Center for the Arts & Humanities – MAC Music Festival Auction 2012
Auction Ends: May 28, 2012 12:00 PM EDT

Books

The Chalfonte Book

Item Number
130
Estimated Value
30 USD
Sold
15 USD to stewartme
Number of Bids
2  -  Bid History

Item Description

The Old Girl, the Grand Dame, the Leading Lady, the Place that Time Forgot...  The Chalfonte, in the historic seaside town of Cape May, NJ, has been called a lot of things by the people who have loved this magical hotel over the last 135 years.

Now for the first time, their stories have been collected to form a remarkable history of a hotel that's unlike any other. A hotel that was built by a Civil War hero from the North and nurtured by a storied Virginia family who turned it into a quintessential southern retreat.  Welcome to...The Chalfonte.

Item Special Note

Karen Fox became aware of the Chalfonte when she first arrived in the area to attend a  friend’s clam bake in Cape May Point in the 1960’s. A devotee of Victorian  architecture, she immediately became a fan. “The whole town is wonderful, but I loved this building the best,” she said. “To  me it looked like a great big steamboat. I remember walking into the lobby and  being intrigued by the look and feel of the place. It was so simple and so  friendly.”

On a subsequent trip, she met owner Anne LeDuc, who, years later, in November  1999, would ask Fox to write a book about the Chalfonte.

Fox ended up with a house on New  Jersey Avenue, and often would join friends for breakfast at the Chalfonte.  Before LeDuc suggested the book, Fox had spent almost 20 years splitting her  time between Cape May and Philadelphia, where she was a news assignment manager  for Channel 10, the NBC affiliate.

“I was delighted, because I knew there was enough of a story to do a book,” Fox  said. Now a full-time writer, she worked over a year on the project.