Bob and Linda Mullock, a local couple who operate various enterprises, including the Cape May National Golf Club, bought the property. Without altering its historical integrity - the Chalfonte was recently named one of the prestigious Historic Hotels of America by the National Trust for Historic Preservation - the Mullocks have added amenities such as private bathrooms and air-conditioning.
"This book was a work of love . . . of my love for the hotel and all the people who come here perennially who really love it," said Fox, of Blue Bell, Pa., a former television news editor and documentary producer who owns a summer home in Cape May. "It's a story about love and survival."
The remarkable Victorian-era structures of Cape May are an anomaly in the tear-it-down/build-it-up-new culture of the Jersey Shore, and they constitute the largest collection of such buildings in the United States. The sprawling Chalfonte, with its vast stretches of gingerbread-decorated porches and balustrades two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean, is an architectural gem among them.
It hasn't always been easy to keep the Grand Dame looking her best. "She has been flooded, battered by the salt winds, and the porches are forever falling off," Fox said.
A veritable army of volunteers, some of whom come back every year, has been enlisted to scrape, paint, polish, and otherwise help maintain it in the off-seasons.
The heart and soul of the Chalfonte emerged as Fox pored over documents and diaries and scanned the faces in sepia photographs.
