History

Thomas H. Conway

amusement operator, Ocean City boardwalk · active 1929

Of Wilmington, Delaware. Owner with Joseph Bryant of Playland, the boardwalk amusement hall burned in the fire of 3 September 1929, and of the Funhouse on Worcester Street near the boardwalk, which was scorched in the same fire. Within three weeks the two men had announced a new and larger Playland to cost $50,000.

In the record (2)

  1. 1929

    Fire runs a block and a half of the board walk on the night after Labor Day and stops at the wall of the Atlantic Hotel.

    Shortly after midnight on Tuesday 3 September 1929 fire broke out in a store at the southern end of the board walk — the Evening Star's dispatch says a sandwich shop, the Smyrna Times a confectionery conducted by a Philadelphian — and ran through about a block and a half of small frame concession buildings on the western edge of the walk, from about Wicomico Street to South Division Street. It took Playland, an amusement hall owned by Thomas H. Conway of Wilmington, and damaged the Boardwalk Restaurant, a cigar store kept by Jack Burns, a store owned by James Velis and Arthur Monkhouse's restaurant; Conway's Funhouse on Worcester Street was scorched. Sparks showered the Atlantic Hotel, which was full, and its guests fled to the boardwalk and the beach in their night clothes while firemen and some of the guests played the hotel's own hose on it. Capt. James Dennis of the Ocean City Fire Department ran hose over the boardwalk and pumped from the Atlantic Ocean; companies came from Berlin, Snow Hill, Salisbury, Willards and Pocomoke City in Maryland and Delmar and Laurel in Delaware, and bay water was used where hose could not be got to the ocean front. A western breeze carried the flames out to sea and the fire was out after about two hours. It did not reach the Baltimore Avenue buildings behind the walk.

    Three years and eight months after the fire that took the pier, the Casino and the Seaside, Ocean City burned again in the same three blocks — and this time the wind blew seaward and the town lost concessions rather than hotels. The Smyrna Times put it in one line: "Ocean City had a similar fire in December, 1925."

    Ocean City BoardwalkAtlantic HotelOcean City Volunteer Fire DepartmentCapt. James DennisGeorge Givens

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

  2. 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 PierSinepuxent Pier and Improvement CompanyMaridel Beach CityWilliam W. McCabeJoseph Bryant

    Source · checked 2026-08-06