Sinepuxent Pier and Improvement Company
company · founded 1928
The company that finally rebuilt Ocean City's pier. In mid-March 1928 Dr. Charles Washington Purnell — proprietor of the Atlantic Hotel — announced that it was 'laying plans for the construction of a fishing pier and an amusement pier' at the resort, the fourth scheme since the fire of December 1925 destroyed the old pier. It succeeded where the Ocean City Amusement Pier Corporation of December 1926 did not: the standard account has the company obtaining a franchise from the town in June 1929 for a 700-foot ocean fishing pier on the site of the old one, with the Pier Ballroom built at its landward end. The two accounts name different presidents — Purnell in the 1928 announcement, Clarence Whealton in the 1929 one — and both are recorded. PRIMARY SOURCE AT LAST: Chapter 118 of the Acts of 1929, approved 11 April 1929, authorises "the SYNEPUXENT Pier and Improvement Company, Inc." — spelled with a Y — to erect and maintain a pier at Ocean City running from the westerly side of Atlantic Avenue east into the ocean. The 700-foot fishing pier was built and standing by June 1929 (the Atlantic Hotel advertises "Near Fishing Pier" from that month), and the $115,000 Pier Ballroom followed in September for the 1930 season.
In the record (6)
1896 · 1896-06-06
Contracts let for a T-shaped iron pier 570 feet into the ocean and a casino of bath-houses, bowling alleys and pool rooms — and Trimper adds a theatrical apartment 100 by 90 feet.
Under "OCEAN CITY. Iron Pier and Casino Contracts Awarded. Cottages Building," the Messenger of 6 June 1896 inventories the largest single season of building the town had yet seen. "A contract for a casino and one for the iron pier have been awarded, and a pavillion will be added to the Plimhimmon. It is expected that the iron pier will be completed, so it is said, by the Fourth of July, and the casino two weeks later. The ground floor of the casino is to contain bath-houses and booths, and the upper story bowling alleys, pool rooms, etc. The iron pier is to be 'T' shaped and to extend 570 feet into the ocean. Mr. Thomas W. Jenkins, of Baltimore, who is one of the incorporators of the pier company, has been at Ocean City taking active measures for improvements." Ten cottages were building and several being remodelled; the builders named are W. J. Warrington of Baltimore, Oscar Purnell of Snow Hill, Alvaro F. Gibbons of Washington, Reverdy J. Dennis, Lambert Ayers, Samuel Massey, George Lewis and Thomas W. Jenkins. "Captain Mahan, United States Army, is putting an addition to his cottage, and Daniel Trimper has added extensive improvements to his house including a theatrical apartment 100 by 90 feet." The same issue's deed-transfer column records the charter itself: "Steel Pier and Railway Co., of Ocean City, Worcester county, Md., Charter. Principal office of the Corporation will be located in the town of Ocean City, Md. Amount of the Capital Stock $50,000, number of shares of the Stock of the Corporation five hundred, par value of each share is $100." By September the pier was being described at 600 feet, not 570.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1928 · 1928-03-21
In March 1928 Dr. Charles Washington Purnell announces the Sinepuxent Pier and Improvement Company — a fishing pier AND an amusement pier — the fourth attempt to replace the pier the 1925 fire took.
Smyrna Times, 21 March 1928: "In line with other improvements which are being made at Ocean City, Md., announcement was made last week by Dr. Charles Washington Purnell that the Sinepuxent Pier and Improvement Company is laying plans for the construction of a fishing pier and an amusement pier for this resort." The Ocean City Amusement Pier Corporation chartered in December 1926 under Clarence W. Whealton of Salisbury, with $160,000 of authorised capital and thirty days to break ground, does not appear in the 1928 corpus at all; the man now announcing a pier is the owner of the Atlantic Hotel. The only other 1928 mentions of an Ocean City amusement pier in the entire corpus are a Washington Daily News motoring feature of 23 May and this item. THE PIER EXISTS BY 1930 and is described on 18 June as "the old Ocean City pier, which burned down, was replaced by a 700-foot ocean fishing pier fronting Atlantic av." — a length matching the standard June-1929 franchise account exactly. But NO CONTEMPORARY SOURCE NAMES THE BUILDER, and "sinepuxent pier" is still zero pages across 1929–31.
1926 ended with a pier company on paper and a promise of a June 1927 opening. 1928 opens with a different company, a different promoter and two piers instead of one. The standard account of Ocean City's pier dates the Sinepuxent Pier and Improvement Company to June 1929, when it obtained its franchise from the town — but here it is announcing plans fifteen months earlier, and announcing them through the proprietor of the Atlantic, not through the Salisbury lawyer who held the 1926 charter.
Pier Ballroom & Bandshell SiteOcean City Amusement Pier CorporationDr. Charles Washington PurnellClarence W. Whealton
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1929
Chapter 118, approved 11 April 1929, authorises the Synepuxent Pier and Improvement Company to build a pier across Atlantic Avenue and into the ocean.
An Act of the 1929 regular session authorised and permitted 'the Synepuxent Pier and Improvement Company, Inc., a body corporate of the State of Maryland, to erect, construct, operate and maintain a pier at Ocean City, at such location and of such specifications as to it may seem best, extending from the westerly side of Atlantic Avenue in said Ocean City and running across said Atlantic Avenue easterly into and on the Atlantic Ocean' — provided it obtained the approval and consent of the Mayor and Council of Ocean City, of the War Department of the United States, and of the persons owning the property the pier abutted. Like the town's bond act of the same session it was passed as an emergency law 'necessary for the immediate preservation of the public health and safety' on a three-fifths yea-and-nay vote.
This is the statute the campaign has been missing. The 1928 pass could find no contemporary source for the Sinepuxent Pier and Improvement Company beyond a single announcement, and recorded that a phrase query for 'sinepuxent pier' across 1927–1930 returns zero pages in all of Chronicling America. It returns zero because the company's statutory name is spelled with a Y — and because the record of it is an act of the General Assembly, not a newspaper. Note what the act does not do: it grants no state money, and it hands the town, the War Department and the neighbours a veto each.
Ocean City Fishing PierPier Ballroom & Bandshell Site
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1929
Five weeks before the Crash, Mayor McCabe puts the summer's net receipts at $1,250,000 and forecasts a winter building boom: a $300,000 boardwalk hotel, a wider boardwalk, a $50,000 Playland and a $115,000 amusement hall on the new pier.
A Delaware weekly of 25 September 1929 printed the whole of what Ocean City meant to build that autumn and winter. Permits were already in at the mayor and council's office for several new summer cottages and one boardwalk hotel costing about $300,000. Thomas H. Conway and Joseph Bryant, owners of the burned Playland, announced a new and larger one at $50,000; the Rapoport Brothers of Philadelphia, whose properties burned, also meant to rebuild, and several smaller places already had. The town planned to rebuild the boardwalk in the amusement section eighteen feet wider, to build a $20,000 bulkhead on the ocean front in north Ocean City near the Catholic Home — a site 'which 50 years ago was the site of an inlet between Ocean City and the Sinepuxent Bay' — and probably to rebuild the sewer system, especially the outlet lines, doing it properly being estimated at $100,000. Also listed: a $2,000 swimming pool at the New Atlantic Hotel, a $5,000 power line to Maridel Beach, $60,000 of new summer cottages, and a $115,000 pier and amusement hall at the shore end of the new pier, to start that fall and be finished for the opening of the 1930 season. Mayor McCabe put the town's net receipts for the summer just ended at $1,250,000.
This is the high-water mark of the boom, and it is dated by the calendar rather than by anything the town did. Read beside the fire of three weeks earlier it is defiance; read beside 29 October it is a list of things about to be tested. Note also the aside about the bulkhead site — an inlet at the north end of Ocean City in about 1879, a claim no other source in this campaign makes.
Ocean City BoardwalkAtlantic HotelOcean City Fishing PierMaridel Beach CityWilliam W. McCabeThomas H. ConwayJoseph Bryant
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1929
Ocean City has a pier again: a 700-foot fishing pier nearly finished by August, and the Atlantic Hotel advertises itself all summer as 'Near Fishing Pier'.
From early June the Evening Star's Ocean City hotel block carried 'Hotel Atlantic — NEW AND ON OCEAN FRONT … Music. Dancing. Near Fishing Pier.' On 10 August the Washington Times reported that 'work on the construction of a fishing pier reaching 700 feet out over the water of Sinepuxent is almost completed. Next year an amusement pier will be built … It will reach out over the ocean and will conclude with a T shaped pavilion.' In April a Delaware weekly had reported that work on 'Ocean City's new $200,000 fishing and amusement pier, to be constructed on the site of the old pier which was burned in December, 1925,' was to start that week under the Sinepuxent Beach and Development Company, headed by Clarence W. Whealton of Salisbury. By 25 September the builders are named as the Sinepuxent Pier and Improvement Company, then planning a $115,000 pier and amusement hall at the shore end of 'the present new Ocean City pier' for the 1930 season.
Four schemes and three corporate names since the fire, and in 1929 something is finally standing over water. The pier of 1929 is a fishing pier; the amusement hall at its landward end — what the town would come to call the Pier Ballroom — is next winter's work. Ocean City spent the back half of the twenties buying a pier in instalments.
Ocean City Fishing PierPier Ballroom & Bandshell SiteAtlantic HotelClarence W. Whealton
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1930 · 1930-06-18
Ocean City has a pier again — a 700-foot ocean fishing pier fronting Atlantic Avenue, on the site of the one the fire took, and by August a Washington paper calls it 900 feet.
Washington Daily News, 18 June 1930, page 4-A, under "Ocean City's Growth Rapid; $250,000 in New Construction / Bathing Beach Widened; Boardwalk Now Reaches Nearly Two Miles; Pier for Fishing": "Ocean City's growth in the last five years has been about 400 per cent, and to meet this great increase in popularity new hotels have been added each season and old ones have been improved. Just recently $250,000 worth of new buildings were added, and the old Ocean City pier, which burned down, was replaced by a 700-foot ocean fishing pier fronting Atlantic av. The bathing beach has been widened, and now has shallow ocean waters for a long distance… Nearly all the hotels are directly on the boardwalk which now extends nearly two miles." The Washington Times of 9 August, datelined Ocean City: "Visitors to this resort see numbers of outstanding improvements. Chief of these is the new fishing pier which extends into the Atlantic Ocean for 900 feet. It offers deep sea fishing under the best possible conditions. Several large amusement places have been built to take the place of those destroyed by the fire last year." The Atlantic Hotel advertised itself all season as "250 rooms — ocean front — near deep sea fishing pier."
The pier question the campaign has carried since the 1925 fire is answered: in 1930 a pier is standing, it is a fishing pier, and it is being advertised from Washington. It also settles which of the two rival companies actually built — the length and the site match the standard account of the Sinepuxent Pier and Improvement Company's June 1929 franchise for a 700-foot pier, not the 1926 Amusement Pier Corporation's thousand-seat theatre.
Ocean City Fishing PierOcean City BoardwalkAtlantic Hotel
Source · checked 2026-08-06