History

Frank A. Furst

Baltimore contractor · active 1920

A Baltimore contractor of the first rank and a power in Maryland Democratic politics, resident at Walbrook. In August 1920 he drove down to Ocean City with United States Senator John Walter Smith to inspect the inlet the February storm had opened in Sinepuxent Bay, and on the Sunday morning fell down the rain-slick porch steps of the Atlantic Hotel, bruising his eye badly and losing consciousness twice. The town's doctor treated him, and he was carried by limousine to the Atlantic Hotel at Berlin while the party telephoned across two counties for a specialist. He joked throughout — told the Senator his "Exhibit A" had been knocked out — and drove himself home to Baltimore two days later by way of Elkton, "because the road was good all the way." His presence, with a sitting U.S. Senator and the state senator for Worcester, is the measure of how seriously Maryland was taking the accidental inlet in the summer of 1920.