Ocean City Pier and Improvement Company
company · founded 1905
Organised at a crowded meeting in the Ocean City railroad depot on Friday 12 May 1905 to build the ocean pier that had been projected since at least 1896. First officers: president Christopher Ludlam of Ocean City, vice-president L. L. Dirickson, Jr., of Berlin, treasurer D. J. Adkins of Berlin, secretary R. Lee Purnell of Snow Hill, assistant secretary J. Edgar Ijams of Baltimore. The Ocean City council granted its charter in July 1905, siting the pier midway between the Atlantic Hotel and the Myers Cottage. Construction began 16 October 1905 on hickory piles — chosen over iron or steel as more durable in salt water — to plans for a structure 900 feet long with a 120-by-70-foot convention and dancing hall at the shore end and a pavilion at the seaward end. At the December 1905 annual meeting Ludlam was re-elected president, Calvin B. Taylor treasurer, R. Lee Purnell secretary, with Taylor and John W. Staton as counsel, and the pier was promised complete for the 1906 season. Directors elected in December 1905: A. J. Benjamin, Walter B. Miller (Salisbury); H. F. Harmonson, D. J. Adkins, Levin L. Dirickson Jr., Calvin B. Taylor, Orlando Harrison (Berlin); John L. Johnson (Frederick); William T. Taber (Philadelphia); J. Edgar Ijams (Baltimore); Christopher Ludlam, William Taylor, Thomas J. Cropper, Joseph Schaeffer, J. J. Dunton, R. Lee Purnell (Ocean City); and John W. Staton (Snow Hill). Ch. 555 of 1906 ratified its charter and gave it power to build amusements on the pier and charge for them; the structure promised 800 feet, an auditorium and "upward of 5,000 incandescent electric lights," and was unfinished at the close of the 1906 season.
Two earlier companies were chartered to build a pier at Ocean City, in 1896 and 1900. This is the one that drove piles.
In the record (15)
1905 · 1905-05-12
A crowded meeting at the railroad depot organises the Ocean City Pier and Improvement Company to build an ocean pier — the third such company since 1896, and the first to build one.
"A New Pier for Ocean City. A company was organized last Friday to erect an ocean pier out from the beach at Ocean City — a project long contemplated. A largely attended meeting was held at the railroad depot." R. Lee Purnell of Snow Hill chaired and J. E. Ijams of Baltimore was secretary. Officers of the Ocean City Pier and Improvement Company of Ocean City, Maryland: president Christopher Ludlam of Ocean City (the town's mayor); vice-president L. L. Dirickson, Jr., of Berlin; treasurer D. J. Adkins of Berlin; secretary R. L. Purnell of Snow Hill; assistant secretary J. E. Ijams of Baltimore. A board of directors was elected to serve one year, and it was proposed "to erect the pier at once and to capitalize the company at $20,000." By 8 July R. Lee Purnell reported plans to build "just below the Atlantic Hotel, extending [900] feet into the Ocean."
capitalised at $10,000–$20,000 — the two Messenger reports disagree
Steel Pier and Railway Company of Ocean CityOcean City Steel Pier Railway and Amusement CompanyChristopher LudlamCol. L. L. DiricksonDavid J. AdkinsRobert Lee PurnellJ. Edgar Ijams
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1905 · 1905-07-22
The City Council of Ocean City grants a charter for the long-projected iron pier, to stand midway between the Atlantic Hotel and the Myers Cottage.
"The City Council of Ocean City has granted a charter for the iron pier which has been projected for Ocean City for many years. It will begin at a point midway between the Atlantic Hotel and the Myers Cottage, which is now occupied as a restaurant by William McKew. The company which will erect the structure is incorporated for $10,000. An architect will visit Atlantic City this week to secure drawings for the projected improvement." This is one of the few documented acts of the Ocean City mayor and council in a year with no municipal election, and it fixes the pier's site — the block that has carried an amusement pier ever since.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1905 · 1905-10-16
Pile-driving for the Ocean City pier starts on 16 October 1905 — 900 feet of hickory piles, a 120-by-70-foot convention and dancing hall at the shore end, and a pavilion at the far end.
"Building Ocean City Pier. Active operations began Monday, the 16th instant, on the construction of the pier at Ocean City, giving employment to a great number of workmen. The beach in the neighborhood of the [locality] where the pier is being constructed is strewn with stout timbers, including hickory piles for the structure. The builders claim that hickory trees cut at the season of the year when the bark will remain are more durable than iron or steel in salt water. The building of the pier will be continued throughout the winter … The plans call for a pier 900 feet long and 130 feet wide. At the shore end there will be a hall for conventions and dancing, 120 feet long by 70 feet wide. At the other end of the pier will be another pavilion. From the shore the pier will extend over the outer bar into deep water." Robert Lee Purnell was promoter and general manager. At the company's annual stockholders' meeting, reported 16 December, Capt. Christopher Ludlam was re-elected president, Calvin B. Taylor treasurer and R. Lee Purnell secretary, with Taylor and John W. Staton as counsel, and "the pier will be completed for the opening of the coming season."
Robert Lee PurnellChristopher LudlamCalvin B. TaylorWilliam T. TaberThomas J. CropperJohn L. JohnsonJoseph SchaeferCapt. Joshua J. DuntonDavid J. AdkinsCol. L. L. Dirickson
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1905 · 1905-10-21
The pier's promoter tells the county paper that an inlet from the ocean to Sinepuxent Bay could be cut two miles below Ocean City "with proper engineering" — twenty-eight years before the storm did it.
In the same column that announced pile-driving for the pier: "It is claimed by Mr. Purnell that two miles or so below Ocean City, where the beach between the Atlantic and Sinepuxent bay is not more than a couple of hundred yards wide, it is perfectly feasible with proper engineering to make an inlet from the Ocean to the Sinepuxent to add salt water for oyster cultivation. Thirty miles below, where the bay is salt, there is already a large area covered with oyster farms." The argument is agricultural, not navigational — salt water for oyster grounds, the same reasoning that drove the 1869–72 canal schemes — and it is offered casually, as one item on a promoter's list of improvements.
Every generation on this beach worked out that the island could be cut. In 1905 the reason given was oysters.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1906 · 1906-04-03
The General Assembly ratifies the charter of the Ocean City Pier and Improvement Company and lets it put amusements on its pier and charge admission.
The company had been incorporated under general law on 30 May 1905, capital stock $25,000 in 500 shares of $50 par, recorded in Worcester County Incorporation Record F. H. P. No. 2, folio 92. Chapter 555 of the Acts of 1906, approved 3 April, ratifies and confirms that charter, declares the shareholders a body corporate, allows the capital to be raised to $100,000 by new subscription or out of retained profits, fixes a quorum of five directors, permits stock to be issued in payment for construction work and materials, and — the operative clause — gives the company "power to construct on its pier or wharf such appliances for amusement or use as the directors of said corporation may determine, and to charge for the use of said pier or wharf or appliances such sums of money as the directors of said company may from time to time see proper to charge." Section 7 ratifies everything already done in the company's name, which is the usual sign that a corporation has been operating ahead of its authority.
The legal birth certificate of the Ocean City pier — and of the idea that you pay to walk out over the ocean.
Pier Ballroom & Bandshell Site
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1906 · 1906-06-02
Ocean City builds its first ocean pier: 800 feet out, a "spacious auditorium" at the beach end, and upward of 5,000 coloured electric lights.
Work was under way in the first week of February — "Considerable progress was made on the ocean pier this week, but nothing further will be done for some time owing to the great difficulty of the work during the severe weather" — and resumed in late May. The Messenger of 2 June 1906: "Work has at last been resumed on the ocean pier, with prospects for an early completion, but not in time for the regular opening of the season here, which will be on June 16. It is proposed to extend the pier out 800 feet, and at the beach end will be erected a spacious auditorium. At night the whole will be brilliantly illuminated by upward of 5,000 incandescent electric lights of various color." The company's stockholders had met at Ocean City in late January, a special car carrying H. F. Harmonson, L. L. Dirickson and Henry J. Anderson down from Berlin; R. Lee Purnell of Ocean City was secretary. The pier did not open in 1906 — the registry dates the pier building to 1907.
Two seasons of work and a winter of bad weather stand between the charter and the first pier — which is why 1907, not 1906, is the year on the plaque.
Pier Ballroom & Bandshell SiteCol. L. L. DiricksonHenry J. Anderson
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1907 · 1907-08-17
"Fully 1,000 people visited the pier on last Tuesday" - the first appearance of Ocean City's pier in the contemporary record.
The Washington Herald's Ocean City correspondent, writing from the town on 17 August 1907, opened his column with a single sentence that is the earliest contemporary notice of the pier this campaign has found: "Fully 1,000 people visited the pier on last Tuesday" - Tuesday 13 August 1907. Secondary accounts hold that the pier and its long white frame pavilion were finished for the opening of the 1907 season, built over three years by a group of local investors organised as the Ocean City Pier and Improvement Company under president William Taylor, and known in its early years as Taylor's Ocean Pier. The Herald item does not name the company, the builder or the opening date; it only proves that by mid-August 1907 there was a pier at Ocean City and that a thousand people walked out on it in a day.
the pier opened in 1907 - a July opening is reported by later accounts but is not yet confirmed from a contemporary source
Pier Ballroom & Bandshell Site
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1909 · 1909-06-24
The pier survives, is advertised for rent by its own company in January, and reopens on 24 June under a five-year lease to Harry R. Ayres.
"FOR RENT. The Ocean City Pier and Improvement Company of Ocean City, Maryland, will rent their Pier for one or five years. Bids to be in hands of Secretary by February 1st, 1909. CALVIN B. TAYLOR, Sect'y, Berlin, Maryland" — *Democratic Messenger*, 30 January 1909. By 12 June the paper reported that "Mr. Harry R. Ayres, who has leased the Ocean City Pier for five years, is making great improvements to the pier and has arranged for new amusements, a splendid orchestra and other attractions," and his own advertisement ran the same week: "THE OCEAN CITY PIER OPENS JUNE 24th. Under new management. With new amusements. Full orchestra in attendance afternoon and evening. Fine dancing pavilion. H. R. AYRES, Manager." In May the pier was "being put in fine shape for the coming season"; in July it was described as "entirely remodeled … now the equal, as an amusement feature, of any pier on the coast." The pier built in 1906–07 therefore stood through 1909, and the company that built it had become a landlord rather than an operator.
Ocean City's pier answered the question every pier on this coast eventually answers — it was still there — and promptly stopped being run by the men who built it.
Harry R. AyresCalvin B. Taylor
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1909 · 1909-09-25
Ocean City publishes its accounts for the first time in the campaign's record: $9,709.58 in, $9,348.63 out, $360.95 left in the bank.
"FINANCIAL REPORT OF OCEAN CITY, MD. From September 16th, 1908 to September 16th, 1909," signed JOHN HAGAN, Treasurer, printed in the *Democratic Messenger* of 25 September 1909. Total receipts $9,709.58; total expenses $9,348.63; balance in bank $360.95. This is the itemised August-term accounting that Chapters 561 and 658 of 1904 required of the town, and it is the first time in campaign 2 that a published Ocean City statement has actually been found. Receipts came from three tax collectors working three different tax years simultaneously — E. M. Scott still collecting 1906 and 1907, Chas. Ludlam collecting 1908 and 1909 — plus water rent, $40 of stand licences in August, a $2,947.08 note from the Ocean City Beach Company, and $61.30 from the Ocean City Pier Company for lights for 1907 and 1908. Expenses run gasoline for the water works ($878.77), police salary ($445), water-works engineer ($315), $1,200 of bond interest in two payments of $600, hose, ladders and rent for the Fire Company, quarantine groceries, garbage hauling at $60, lamp-lighting, and one line reading "Thomas Taylor, taxing account of bath tub and toilets 5.00."
A whole town's year of government fits on one newspaper column, and it balances to within $360.
Ocean City Beach CompanyJohn HaganW. Lee CareyFrancis J. Townsend
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1910 · 1910-06-18
'Carpenters, painters and laborers are working day and night': the boardwalk repaired, cement sidewalks going in, and the railway planning a second station up the beach.
'These days are busy ones at Ocean City, the famous Eastern Shore resort. Carpenters, painters and laborers are working day and night to get things ready for the opening of the season. The boardwalks are being repaired and several new cement sidewalks are being put in. The hotels are being overhauled and the boarding houses fixed up so as to be ready to accommodate the big crowds which are expected. From present indications all the hotels will be open and most of the cottages along the boardwalk have been rented. There are still a few on Baltimore Avenue for rent ... Mr. Ayers, manager of the big Ocean Pier, is making arrangements to add several new attractions to his pier this Summer ... Last season this pier was a great attraction to Ocean City and Mr. Ayers made a great success of the enterprise. The Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway Company are making some improvements in their facilities to handle the big crowds expected. The Company have been figuring for some time to PLACE A PASSENGER STATION FURTHER UP THE BEACH so as to accommodate the cottagers and people stopping at the hotels up the boardwalk.' Three things fall out of one paragraph: the boardwalk in 1910 is long enough to have an 'up' end with its own hotels and cottages; the town is beginning to build in cement (a Berlin correspondent noted in March that 'at Ocean City the use of these blocks for foundations and whole structures is likely to become general'); and the railway is thinking about a second, uptown depot a full six years before the highway bridge.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic RailwayHarry R. Ayres
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1912
The Atlantic Casino changes hands and the Pier gets a new management that visitors actually like.
Two amusement properties turn over in 1912. In April: "R. L. Purnell, real estate agent, completed a deal Thursday by which the Atlantic Casino at Ocean City was sold to Joseph Tibbett" — the Casino being the hall where Ocean City nominated its mayor in 1908 and the Democrats picked a congressman in 1904. In August, of the pier leased to an unnamed New York man for the 1911 season: "The Pier at Ocean City this season seems to be especially attractive to visitors. Under the new management conditions have been much improved over former years and the Pier seems to be the first place sought by newcomers, especially those who enjoy moonlight dancing, excellent fishing and a delightful ocean breeze. The bowling alleys are of the best and are constantly [in use]." Elsewhere in the year the Ocean City Hotel — John J. Rayne's property opposite the railroad station and opposite the Seaside Hotel, "25 ROOMS: 12 bed-rooms, barber shop, running water, bath, toilets and electric and acetylene-gas lights" — was offered at private sale through Upshur & Upshur, and in October Dr. Frank Townsend of Ocean City bought the drugstore formerly run as Townsend & Jones.
Atlantic Casino CompanyRobert Lee Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1913
The pier issues season tickets, plants evergreens from a Berlin nursery on its deck, and advertises itself as "clean and respectable at all times."
The Messenger of 5 July 1913: "We acknowledge, with thanks, the receipt of a season ticket to the Ocean City Pier from Hon. Orlando Harrison, President of the Association. One of the places for comfort and amusement at Ocean City is the Pier — it is decorated with evergreen trees from Harrison's Nurseries at Berlin. Hook and line fishing from the pier is excellent. The pier is kept clean and respectable at all times and is under good management." Orlando Harrison — Berlin nurseryman and mayor, and the man who drove the failed 1908 attempt to cut an inlet through the beach — is here running the pier company, and dressing its deck with his own stock. "Clean and respectable" is doing the same work as Mayor Powell's speakeasy raids the same week: in a dry county the resort was selling its own decency.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Pier Ballroom & Bandshell SiteOrlando Harrison
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1914
"Ocean City's Greatest Attraction": the pier runs day and night in 1914 with new bowling alleys, pool tables, a soda fountain, a museum, dancing at the pier head and four reels of moving pictures nightly.
The pier's own standing advertisement, William Taylor manager: "OPEN DAY AND NIGHT. New Bowling Alleys, Pool Tables, Soda Fountain and Museum. DANCING every afternoon and evening at the end of the Pier. Moving Pictures every night. 4 good reels. Price 5c. Admission to Pavilion Free. 10c admits to Pier, with privilege of fishing and dancing." It is the fullest inventory of the pier's amusements the campaign has, and it runs through the season three months after the structure came down in the March snow. In 1913 the pier was under Orlando Harrison as president of "the Association"; the 1914 advertising names only the manager.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1925 · 1925-07-25
Five months before the pier burned, Ocean City was already selling stock in a new $25,000 fishing pier — reviving a scheme the World War had killed in 1917.
Worcester Democrat, 25 July 1925, page one: "$25,000 OCEAN CITY PIER IS PLANNED — Will Make For Longer Season At Popular Resort—First Stock Has Been Sold." "A new $25,000 pier for Ocean City is the topic of general discussion around that popular resort, the first stock in the proposed corporation being sold. Fourteen names from Worcester and Somerset headed the list. The object of the promoters is to furnish a convenient place for sea fishing, which will attract tourists and make for a longer season at the resort. The plan is to sell 250 shares of stock, having a par value of $100 each. The returns from the nominal charge made to the public for the privileges of the pier are to be turned over to a sinking fund, making the affair self-supporting. Such a corporation was formed 8 years ago, it is said, and specifications for building were drawn, when America's entrance into the World War put an end to the project. Early this season, however, interest was again revived, many of the original subscribers still backing the idea. Although no definite site has been decided upon, it is believed that if plans materialize the pier will be erected near the Atlantic Hotel. Probably 'Ocean City Pier' will be chosen as the name."
The town wanted a fishing pier to stretch the season; in December it lost the pier it already had, and the fishing-pier idea is what eventually came back.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1926 · 1926-12-04
A $160,000 corporation is chartered in December to rebuild the pier on the old site, with a 1,000-seat theatre and bowling alleys.
Worcester Democrat, 4 December 1926, 'AMUSEMENT PIER WILL BE ERECTED AT OCEAN CITY — Incorporation Papers Granted Pier Amusement Co. Construction Starts Soon — SITE TO BE SAME AS FOR THE OLD PIER': 'Incorporation papers have been granted to the Ocean City Amusement Pier Corporation, with an authorized capital of $160,000. About $120,000 of the amount will be paid in when construction starts within the next month. The new corporation has purchased the franchise of the pier company whose property was damaged by fire at the resort last December.' Officers: president, Clarence W. Whealton of Salisbury; vice-president, B. F. Shipley, Ocean City; secretary and treasurer, R. R. Dennis, Ocean City. The town's ordinance granting the building permit required construction to start within thirty days, set the building line fifty feet west of the boardwalk and capped the pier at 750 feet into the ocean. Plans by Robert N. Walker, a Washington architect: 300 feet of frontage on a pavilion built out from the main boardwalk, a fishing pier at the rear reaching forty feet beyond the bar, and in the front portion a theatre and bowling alleys — 'The former will have a seating capacity of 1,000 and will be the largest auditorium at the resort. The theater and pavilion will provide much needed facilities for conventions, for which the resort is host for no small number during the summer season.' To be finished for the opening of the season 'late in June'.
Ocean City Amusement Pier CorporationClarence W. Whealton
Source · checked 2026-08-06