In a year when
Cape May
has been a whirl with changes in the accommodations arena,
one Columbia Avenue address remains
constant – The Delsea.
The gingerbread-coated house has had the same owner
since 1969. In fact, Rosemary Stumpo is only the fourth owner in the Delsea’s
137-year old history.
Like many who settle in
Cape May, Rosemary was looking for a change. As
the sportswear buyer for John Wanamaker and Casual Corners in Philadelphia,
she’d tired of those tedious trips to
Italy and
Paris and was looking for a
simpler life.
“It was very different here in
Cape May in those days. There were only rooming
houses here. No B&Bs. No one knew what that meant. This was the first house I
looked at.” Rosemary called the realtor and said “How’d you like to sell
me a house?” The realtor said “Sure. Just go up to the house and ring the
doorbell.” Rosemary laughed, “Can you imagine doing that today?”
Her brother scoffed when he heard his sister was
about to become a guest house owner. “You never made your bed when you were
home, why would you want to make your living making beds?” He said.
She charged ahead anyway and took it as a good omen
when she woke up Memorial Day Weekend to the sounds of the U.S. Coast Guard’s 21
gun salute. “I slept in the front bedroom,” she said, “and I woke up thinking
someone was shooting at me.” Undaunted, she went to settlement the next week.
“I had three glorious summers,” she recalls. Her main
occupation? Beachgoer. She started out that first summer with five seasonal
reservations. Among them was a Scottish couple. When someone would come along
and want to rent an available room, the Scottish gentleman would walk down to
Steger’s Beach where Rosemary hung out and fetch her. From the get-go, Rosemary
had an easy breezy approach to running her guest house. She provided guests with
juice and coffee in the morning. People could come and go as they liked. If they
wanted to sit on the front porch and chat, Rosemary would accommodate. If they
didn’t feel like socializing, that was fine too. The house was always full and
the guests came back year after year.
“We’ve have couples who have met, married, had
children, had grandchildren and every summer returned to the Delsea.”
Up until this most recent re-do, none of the rooms
had heat but Rosemary kept the Delsea open through Victorian Week. “I simply
told the guests they were welcome to stay. We had plenty of blankets but no, we
had no heat. And we were always sold out.”
After the third summer, Rosemary got the yen to be
busy and started buying and renting properties in
Cape May. For a while, she had a retail store on
the corner of Ocean and Hughes streets selling, sportswear of course. In the
early 70s, she encouraged her brother X, short for Francis Xavier, who ran a
pizza place in Philadelphia, to retire and come down to Cape May and open a
pizza place here (the Stumpo version of "retiring") and that’s how Stumpo’s
Pizza became a Cape May fixture.
But that’s a story to be told later; let’s get back
to the Delsea.
At the end of her first season, Rosemary decided to
make a few improvements on the property and encouraged her friend Suzanne
Littell to leave her job as a buyer for, at various times, B. Altman, Joseph
Horne, and John Wanamaker department stores and come to
Cape May as Rosemary’s partner and decorator.
The goal of that first re-do was simple - “to make
people feel comfortable.” Together they removed the old wallpaper and
applied new. The floors were covered in an old-style linoleum so they carpeted
the house to give it a cozier feel. Then they started on their second goal – to
make themselves feel comfortable. They added a room on to the back of the
private quarters that included a full dining room, bathroom and kitchen.
The next renovation came in 1979 when the "dynamic
duo" decided to re-do the outside of the house despite the dire warnings of
their friends and foes. “People said, ‘Don’t start that. You don’t know what
you’ll find.’ ”
But the two were tired of painting and repainting the
asbestos siding on the house. They began tearing it away from the front of the
house and discovered, beneath the asbestos, perfectly preserved clapboard
siding. Four days later, the job was done and yes, they did it all themselves.
There was no Historic Preservation Commission in
those days, but Suzanne had a good eye and a genuine desire to bring the house
back to its original state, which included restoring the Delsea to its original
colors - silver gray with dark brown shutters - as well as replacing and
repairing the gingerbread.
Suzanne bought a jigsaw and cut the replacement
pieces herself and with Rosemary’s help reattached them to the facade.
With the Delsea’s third make-over, Rosemary is
bringing the stately house into the 21st century and turning the
reins over to a new generation. Rosemary’s niece Marybeth Tyron has joined the
partnership and will gradually take over running The Delsea as well as the
Stumpo restaurants.
Rosemary opened two more restaurants in 2004 – one in
Margate and another in Somers
Point. Whew! That’s a lot of work for a woman who’s planning to retire – but
lest we sound repetitive – that’s the Stumpo idea of "retirement."
Marybeth, for
example stepped down from her job as an insurance executive in
Philadelphia to join the
Stumpo team. She brought her co-worker Marilyn Jean Lee along with her.
Marilyn is the Chief Operating Officer at the Delsea
and helped with the latest renovations which included taking the eaves off the
side of the house and repainting the exterior with some spiffy Victorian colors.
Baseboard heating has been provided in certain rooms in the house, including the
kitchen and the new game room. The installation of air conditioners in the rooms
has been a HUGE concession on Rosemary’s part. “This house is always cool – I
don’t see the need for air conditioners but we’ve got them.” So, Rosemary
insisted that the screens in all the windows be replaced so that guests can
still feel free to “open the windows.” “That’s what people come down
here for –
the cool fresh, ocean air.”
New window screens, heat, air conditioners, new
paint, upgrading of all the bedding – a little of the old, mixed in with a
little of the new. The changes have given the Delsea a fresh, up to date look
but not diminished the informality and old fashioned feel that has been the
signature quality of the
Columbia Avenue
house.
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| What started
out as two rooms on the second floor, is
now one large room with access to the
verandah. |
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Sitting in the game room, Rosemary said “It was time
for a change,” and she didn’t just mean in the décor. She still wants to be very
much hands on in the businesses but ii also ready to scale back a bit.
“Marybeth and I have been close for years but she has
a daughter and son (ages 13 and 15) and was tired of the corporate life. So I said let’s
do something about it.