History

Ella Dennis

property owner, Ocean City · active 1939

Owner of the corner lot on which a bicycle-renting station was licensed in June 1939 after the council notified sixteen surrounding owners and held a hearing at which nobody objected.

In the record (1)

  1. 1939 · 1939-06-06

    Ocean City's permit machinery in 1939: notify every owner within 250 feet, set a hearing, and see who turns up

    On 2 June the clerk was 'instructed to notify all property owners within 250 ft of Mrs. Dennis' lot of Application for Bicycle' station, 'of a hearing to be held on the application on Tuesday Evening at 8 P.M. June 6th.' He then wrote out the sixteen people notified, by name, in a column: Mrs. E. E. Dennis, Mr. S. J. Carey, Mrs. Thelma Dennis, Mr. Kinnamon, H. D. Cropper, Dr. F. J. Townsend, Edward H. Johnson, Myrtle Brittingham and others. At the hearing on 6 June the applicant, Mr. Roman, 'stated he was not going to operate only during day light and would place lights on Sign to satisfaction of Mayor. No objectors were present or made so clerk was ordered to grant licence.' A bicycle-renting station cost $250 a year, the second-highest fee in the ordinance. — 1940 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The 1939 fact describes the machinery: notify every owner within 250 feet, set a hearing, see who turns up. 1940 runs it twice more and both runs go the applicant's way. Irving T. Faustin's 90-by-75-foot store building at Ninth Street was granted on 14 October over four objecting households named in the minute. Mrs. Bassett's two stores at the Roosevelt Hotel drew three objectors on 6 November, including the mayor's wife, and produced not a refusal but a councilman's compromise - drop back eight feet to the building line - and a site visit the next morning. Across 1939 and 1940 the rule has now been run six times in the campaign's record; it granted a popcorn stand and a bicycle station over live objectors, refused one white man, granted two more, and refused one Colored Recreation Hall.

    Write the sixteen names out and the machinery stops being abstract. This is the same procedure - the same clerk, the same notice radius, the same hearing - that was turned on Charles C. Richards and the Colored Recreation Hall seven months earlier. When nobody objected it produced a licence in four days.

    Mr. RomanJ. M. MumfordEdmond H. Johnson

    Source · checked 2026-08-11