HISTORY OF THE CHALFONTE
As the Chalfonte celebrates its 132nd anniversary, co-owners Anne LeDuc and Judy Bartella are proud to have succeeded in preserving the Hotel’s authenticity, and retaining the 19th century hotel experience along the way. The owners have met the demands imposed by evolving customer needs and increased competition, but while making necessary improvements, 
they have been stalwart in their stewardship of the Chalfonte. They have resisted modernizations such as air-conditioning, televisions and telephones in the rooms. They have resisted adding so many private bathrooms as to rob guests of the unique privilege of making barefoot nighttime forays down 130-foot hallways.
Built in the nineteenth century, the Chalfonte offers "the view from yesterday" — genteel Southern-style hospitality, ornate gingerbread verandas lined with comfortable rocking chairs and a constant sea breeze to rejuvenate and refresh. The Chalfonte’s distinctive ship-like profile, crowned by her Italianate cupola, now occupies nearly an entire city block.
A BIT OF BACKGROUND. . .
The Hotel was built in 1876 by Colonel Henry Sawyer, (pictured at right) and was originally planned as a boarding house. Sawyer’s Chalfonte underwent most of its expansion between 1876 and 1909, and the present footprint is much as it was in 1909. This venerable grande dame by the sea still retains its Victorian charm —louvered doors to let the breeze through, Southern cuisine in The Magnolia Room, and original antiques and fixtures throughout.
COLONEL HENRY SAWYER, Carpenter & Builder
Henry Sawyer arrived in Cape May in 1848 at the age of eighteen, a supporter of the Union side in the Civil War. He enlisted in a Pennsylvania regiment since a New Jersey one hadn't yet formed. After three months service and rising to the rank of captain, he returned home only to re-enlist in a New Jersey regiment. In June 1863, after being captured during a bloody exchange at the Battle of Brandy in Virginia, Sawyer was incarcerated at Libby Prison in Richmond. Thus began the episode that was to make him both a national and local hero.
In retaliation for the shooting of two Confederate Cavalry prisoners of war, the Confederacy proposed to execute two Union prisoners, drawn by lottery. Sawyer was one of the two selected in the lottery of death. Secretary of War Stanton, in consultation with President Lincoln, warned the South they would execute two Confederates if they executed two Union prisoners. Upping the stakes, one of the Confederate prisoners selected was the son of General Robert E. Lee. The situation ended with Sawyer being released unharmed in a swap. He resumed active duty, and returned to Cape May in 1875 as a recognized war hero.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CHALFONTE
Having bought a parcel of land in 1872 at the corner of Howard Street and Sewell Avenue, in 1875, Sawyer began construction of "Sawyer’s 
Chalfonte." (Chalfonte means "cool fountain" in French; Sawyer’s reason for using the name is unknown.) In 1876 Colonel Sawyer bought all the rest of the square bounded by Columbia, Franklin, Sewell, and Howard except for the lot at the corner of Columbia and Howard.
Cape May's inclination away from resort hotels in favor of the intimacy of cottages had already begun. This trend was sealed in the fall of 1878 when the city suffered yet another disastrous fire. Previous fires had seen the total destruction of the Mt. Vernon Hotel in 1858, and of more properties in 1869. While the fire of 1878 reduced Cape May's count of hotel rooms from 2200 to 200 in a single night, and marked the demise of large hotel construction in the rest of Cape May, the Chalfonte, standing unscathed beyond the fire’s reach, was about to experience an unprecedented expansion.
That year, (1878) Henry Sawyer extended his then two-year-old boarding house down Sewell Avenue, adding nineteen rooms to his existing eighteen. The original residence and addition were a significant improvement in architectural refinement over the pre-Civil-War hotels. While in no way extravagant, the building had a simple dignified Italian form (some-times known as "Cube Italian" in Cape May) with a balanced plan and facade.
In spite of suffering the ravages of time and storm, with minimal
foundations, the first three phases of the building are soundly built with an eye to graceful resolution of any geometrical anomalies. Sawyer owned the hotel for another ten years, selling it in 1888 after just thirteen years of ownership. He died in 1893.
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LATER OWNERSHIP. . .
Between 1888 and 1911 when it was bought by the Satterfield family of Richmond, Virginia, the hotel had had six owners, and was sold at sheriffs’ sales twice. In this period from 1888 to 1911, one of the various owners extended the Chalfonte to its current size, adding another twenty-three rooms along Sewell Avenue, enlarging the dining room, and providing delightful architectural riddles for future preservationists to solve.
Where the two phases of construction join, one cannot discern a serious effort to marry the disparate architectural and building styles. This is seen in the change of hotel room size and configuration with the addition of some private baths, and in the randomness of the construction in the last addition, which contrasts directly with the carefully orchestrated details of Sawyer’s construction. Changes in roof and ceiling, variations in flooring type in the dining room, abrupt cessation of crown molding in dining room, change in board wainscot in the dining room, all support the conclusion that Sawyer was not the builder of this addition.
The Hotel has had three owners — Henry Sawyer, The Satterfield family of Richmond, Virginia, and present and current stewards, Anne LeDuc and Judy Bartella, who have owned and operated the hotel for 30 years. Anne LeDuc first came to the hotel as a two-year-old guest and eventually worked at the Hotel in her teens and twenties. In 1973 when Meenie Satterfield made plans to sell the Hotel, LeDuc and colleague Judy Bartella proposed to Meenie that they be given the opportunity to manage the Hotel. She assented. With no intention then of purchasing the property, they did so in 1983.
While managing the Hotel and prior to its purchase, LeDuc and Bartella realized they would need guidance and assistance in preserving and restoring the steadily deteriorating façade and its aging infrastructure. The Hotel was suffering the results of fifty years of deferred maintenance. Little had been done to ensure its structural health.
In August 1973, Bartella arranged for students in the University of Pennsylvania Historic Preservation program to visit the Hotel. They prepared graphic documentation of the principal facade, floor plans of the hotel and its cottages, and a site plan. These drawings are now in the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) collection housed in the Library of Congress. Though this was an enormous help to the preservation process, it was not going to be enough.
PRESERVING OUR NATIONALHISTORIC SITE. . .
In 1979, Dr. David Fogle, Professor of Urban Planning and Historic Preservation at the University of Maryland (UMD) School of Architecture, happened to be visiting Cape May, dining one evening in The Chalfonte’s Magnolia Dining Room. Fogle and his friends retired for drinks to the Hotel’s 
bar, where they (unflatteringly) critiqued the Chalfonte’s condition — within earshot of Owner Judy Bartella. She joined the group, and eventually suggested (perhaps challenged) Fogle that he and some of his students "might like to have a go at the old place," or words to that effect.
The result of this encounter began a remarkable partnership in reclamation. After many planning meetings with the owners, Fogle returned the following Spring with graduate architectural students, and launched the now 21-year-old preservation program for the Chalfonte. It is virtually unique in the United States, offering students a three-week, hands-on summer preservation course at a property located in the National Historic Landmark City of Cape May, for which they receive three aca-demic credits. The factual foundation for the program had to be drawn from both written and graphic historic materials.
Looking at old maps, photographs and engravings of the Chalfonte building yielded a great deal of conflicting evidence. It emerged that many of the engravings and drawing were artist's renderings before the fact: images of the building began appearing even before it was built. It also appeared that while Sawyer wanted a cupola, it was not built until sometime after the 1876 extension of the building. Archival sources and evidence led instructors to the task of compiling testimony from the building itself.
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This effort produced many instances that illustrated the dialogue or differences between archival and physical evidence. For example, some early engravings of the building suggest that the first floor porches did not have balusters. Examination of sawn balusters reinforces this. All the first floor balusters are of the same design, and different from the baluster design of the second floor porches and the balconies. Because the first-floor porches were extended several times, one would expect to see evidence of various balusters, but there is no such evidence.
The first project undertaken by UMD in May 1980 was the restoration and preservation of the Hotel’s Magnolia Room, 120 feet in length, and in need of 
scraping, plastering and painting. The project required the full three weeks of work, and 600 pounds of spackle to prepare walls and repair ceiling details.
The restoration and preservation program has taken place every year (with the exception of two) since 1979, directed and supervised over the years by UMD staff members David Fogle, Judith Capen, Michael Arnold. Students and professors arrive in late May and stay for three weeks. The program has given an academic institution an educational clinic at its original source while performing a service to the Hotel and the City of Cape May. This "Service Learning" approach has produced a tangible body of archival materials, field drawings and restorative architectural projects and also provided the Hotel with intangible benefits.
Through the work of the UMD staff and students, the Chalfonte staff and guests reap the benefit of renewed interest in and responsibility for the preservation of this gem in Cape May’s crown. The UMD’s mining of the lode of archival data and artifacts has enabled the Hotel to create new materials promoting the Hotel’s unique architectural history.
Pictured above is the result of a technique known as Shadow Sketching, achieved by projecting a slide onto a wall, and shading in with pencil, to produce an accurate photo drawing of the slide. There is a series of five of these drawings from the 2000 UMD program.
The Chalfonte is proud to announce its receipt of the 2001 New Jersey Historic Preservation Award, in recognition of our efforts in innovative histoic preservation educational programs.
The Chalfonte gratefully acknowledges the University School of Maryland School of Architecture, the dedication of Mike Arnold and Judith Capen who have provided the Hotel and this website with a huge breadth of historical text and archival materials and volumes of drawings, and amazing insight into this architectural marvel.
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