Cape May: Victorian Grandeur, Lighthouse Views & Legendary Sunsets

The southernmost city in New Jersey has operated as a seaside resort since 1761, making it the oldest seashore resort in America — wealthier Philadelphians have been coming here to escape the summer heat for more than 260 years. A catastrophic fire in November 1878 burned most of the old wooden buildings to the ground, and the town was rebuilt almost entirely in the High Victorian styles fashionable at the moment: Queen Anne cottages with their wraparound porches and decorative gingerbread trim; Italianate houses with bracketed eaves and paired windows; Stick-style structures with exposed timber framing; Second Empire mansions with their distinctive mansard roofs. More than 600 Victorian structures survive in extraordinary density and condition, making the entire city a National Historic Landmark — the architectural equivalent of a time capsule from the Gilded Age American shore. Congress Hall, built in 1816 and rebuilt in its current form after the fire, remains the social centerpiece; the Emlen Physick Estate of 1879 is the architectural gem; and the colored cottages of the residential streets offer one of the most photogenic streetscapes on the Eastern Seaboard.

Built in 1859 — the third lighthouse to occupy this site at the tip of the Cape May peninsula — this 157-foot brick tower rises above Cape May Point State Park with 199 cast-iron spiral steps to the lantern room. The original first-order Fresnel lens was replaced in 1946 with an automated light, but the lighthouse itself has been restored by the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts to its mid-Victorian operating condition. On clear days the lantern room commands one of the most expansive views on the Jersey Shore: the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, the Delaware Bay opening to the west, Cape Henlopen across the bay in Delaware, and — on exceptional days — the Atlantic City skyline forty miles to the north. The lighthouse sits within a 190-acre state park with walking trails through coastal dune habitat and some of the finest shorebird and warbler migration viewing on the Atlantic Flyway.

The pedestrian heart of Cape May's Victorian commercial district, Washington Street Mall runs three blocks through restored 19th-century storefronts that now house galleries, boutiques, ice cream parlors, and the restaurants that give Cape May its reputation as one of the better dining destinations on the Jersey Shore. The Ugly Mug — a sprawling, cheerful institution with craft beer and a raw bar — has been the place to eat lunch in Cape May since 1975; Frescos occupies a Victorian cottage with a garden patio and a menu that takes local seafood seriously. A farmers market sets up on Wednesday mornings with produce from the surrounding Cumberland and Cape May County farms.

Use the afternoon to explore a different side of Cape May Historic District — there's more to discover beyond the morning highlights.

The westernmost beach in Cape May, at the foot of Sunset Boulevard where the Delaware Bay shore turns to face the open water, is unique in the region for two reasons. Cape May diamonds — naturally tumbled quartz crystals that originated in the Appalachian headwaters of the Delaware River and have been polished smooth by thousands of miles of river and tidal travel — wash up on this beach and virtually nowhere else in Cape May; beachcombers with good eyes can find them in the surf line any day of the year. The rusting bow of the SS Atlantus, an experimental concrete ship built in 1918 and sunk in a 1926 storm while being used as a ferry dock, protrudes from the bay just offshore — one of only a handful of concrete ships remaining anywhere in the world. As the sun descends toward the Delaware Bay horizon in the early evening, Sunset Beach hosts a nightly flag-lowering ceremony and offers what many consider the finest sunset view on the entire Jersey Shore: the light over the open bay, unobstructed by dunes or development, with the Delaware shore a faint line on the horizon.