when was congress hall in cape may built
Congress Hall (Cape May hotel) Congress Hall was first constructed in 1816 as a wooden boarding house for guests to the new seaside resort of Cape May; and the proprietor, Thomas H. Hughes, called it "The Big House." Locals, thinking it too big to be successful, called it "Tommy's Folly."[2] In 1828, when Hughes was elected to the House of Representatives, he changed the name of the hotel to Congress Hall. It burned to the ground in Cape May's Great Fire of 1878, but within a year, its owners had rebuilt the hotel in brick.