Harry Kelly
hotel proprietor, Ocean City · active 1938
Named with Ethel Kelly in the Ocean City assessment list of 10 May 1938 against an addition to the Royalton assessed at $11,000 - the entry that finally establishes that the Royalton Hotel belonged to the Kelleys, which the 1937 record could only infer from a parenthesis in a tax book.
In the record (1)
1938 · 1938-05-10
The Royalton was Harry and Ethel Kelley's hotel, and in 1938 they added eleven thousand dollars to it
The 1937 pass could get no further than a parenthesis: Ocean City's assessment book of 29 June 1937 carried $2,000 of personal property against 'Royalton (Kelly)', and a Mrs. Ethel Kelley had taken a permit in February 1937 for a 34-by-62 addition to her hotel. Whether the two were the same thing was recorded as an inference and left open. The new-assessment list of 10 May 1938 closes it in one line: 'Harry & Ethel Kelly - add. to Royalton - 11000.00.' Two names, the hotel named outright, and an addition assessed at eleven thousand dollars - the second-largest new assessment in the town that year, and roughly five times what a boardwalk hotel like the Rideau had changed hands for the year before.
Source · checked 2026-08-11