Qualla: Resorts Casino Hotel

Resorts Casino Hotel: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0. On the morning of May 26, 1978, Steve Lawrence rolled the first pair of dice in legal American casino gambling east of the Mississippi. Governor Brendan Byrne had just cut the ribbon. The line outside Resorts International stretched down the Atlantic City Boardwalk, and people had to wait hours to get in - New Jersey's initial gaming laws allowed the casino to operate only 18 hours a day during the week and 20 on weekends, and so the building filled and emptied in waves. Lawrence's wife Eydie Gorme played the Super Star Theater that opening night. The casino floor was wedged into the old Haddon Hall, a 1920s hotel that had been a Quaker boarding house in another life. For one brief moment, Atlantic City was the only place in America outside Nevada where you could legally play craps. The rest of the boardwalk has spent the decades since trying to catch up.

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Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0

Resorts Casino Hotel: Two Quaker Houses

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The corner of North Carolina and Pacific Avenues was farmland in 1868, when Elisha and Elizabeth Roberts paid John DaCosta $6,500 for a plot of it. They built a three-story wooden boarding house called Chalfonte House for $21,000 over the following winter and named it for Chalfon...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Resorts Casino Hotel: Camp Boardwalk

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit B64 (Andy Borysowski) (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. During World War II, the United States Army took over forty-seven Atlantic City resort hotels and turned the boardwalk into a basic training facility called Camp Boardwalk - one of the strangest mass conversions of civilian property in American military history. The Chalfonte-Had...

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Image: B64 (Andy Borysowski) (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Resorts Casino Hotel: The First Bet

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit B64 (Andy Borysowski) (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. New Jersey voters approved casino gambling in November 1976 - a referendum to which Resorts International had heavily contributed. The company had already taken the precaution of buying control of Leeds & Lippincott, the firm that owned Chalfonte-Haddon Hall, the previous summer ...

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Image: B64 (Andy Borysowski) (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Resorts Casino Hotel: Trump, Griffin, and Three Helicopters

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit B64 (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1987 Resorts International had stopped reinvesting in the boardwalk property. Donald Trump bought a controlling stake in the parent company and made a tender offer for the rest. Television producer Merv Griffin counter-bid. After two months of public battle, the two men split ...

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Image: B64 (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Resorts Casino Hotel: The Twenties Return

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit B64 (Andy Borysowski) (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Resorts changed hands twice more in the 2000s, lost $140 million in resale value along the way, and surrendered to its lenders in December 2009. In late 2010, former Tropicana executive Dennis Gomes took over for $35 million. His big idea was to lean into the building's actual er...

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Image: B64 (Andy Borysowski) (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0