The Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts (MAC) was born in September 1970 at a critical juncture in Cape May’s history.

In the 1960s, Cape May had become a magnet for growing numbers of historic preservationists and artists, attracted by its unparalleled (albeit dilapidated) collection of Victorian seaside architecture. Their vision was increasingly at odds with the city government, which saw modern motel construction as the answer to Cape May’s declining number of visitors. When the historic Hotel Lafayette was torn down in the summer of 1970 to make way for the Marquis de Lafayette, the preservationists vowed that they would band together and fight any future demolitions.

They did not have long to wait. In September, the developer-owners of the Emlen Physick Estate — with its 1879 mansion and outbuildings, vacant and vandalized, on eight overgrown acres — announced plans to bulldoze this landmark to make way for tract housing. To stop this plan, MAC’s founders took the lead in incorporating the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts. Their efforts to raise the $90,000 purchase price for the Physick Estate inadvertently led MAC into a pitched battle with City Hall. Federal funding was the likeliest source, but the HUD grants written by MAC’s founders had to be funneled through the municipal government. Much to the dismay of the new organization, the city administration turned down the federal grant, citing its opposition to the loss of tax ratables.

Not to be denied, MAC’s leaders mounted a political revolution to achieve their goals. Running on a platform of quality of life and historic preservation, Bruce Minnix and Jerry Inderwies swept to victory in the November 1972 elections. Minnix’s first actions as mayor in 1973 were to accept the HUD grant, purchasing the Physick Estate for the City of Cape May and immediately leasing it to MAC for its restoration and operation as a public cultural facility.

Minnix’s four years in office, crowned by the entire city’s being declared a National Historic landmark in 1976, proved to be a turning point in Cape May’s history. During his tenure, the slogan "our future is in our past" became the official policy of city government. This commitment to historic preservation has been carried on by every administration since then.

At the same time that they were waging these political battles, MAC’s founders were busy laying the organization’s foundations. Their first priority, naturally, was to restore the Physick Estate. They rallied an army of volunteers, who repaired leaking roofs, sanded and painted, reglazed missing windows, cleared jungle growth from the grounds, and carried out the many tasks needed to bring the Estate back from the brink. They then embarked on a thorough restoration of the main house as a Victorian house museum, a mission which has continued to the present.

From the outset, however, MAC’s founders launched programs that went far beyond restoring the Physick Estate. One of the major initiatives was to extend MAC’s interpretative reach over the entire community. In 1971, MAC started guided walking tours of Cape May’s Historic District. The following year, they purchased the trolley tour franchise of the defunct Victorian Village Development Corporation, and in 1973 began major historic house tours that opened large numbers of Cape May’s Victorian gems to the public.

Equally important, MAC’s founders launched special events that increased Cape May’s appeal to visitors and transformed the economy of the area. They broke new ground in 1973 when they held the first Victorian Weekend over the Columbus Day holiday. As it grew in popularity, this October event became a powerful magnet pulling the Cape May tourism season beyond the traditional 10 weeks of summer. They continued this trend the following year, when MAC’s first Christmas Candlelight House Tour put Cape May on the path of becoming a major Christmas destination.

As Cape May’s popularity rose in the 1980s in response to a national craze for Victoriana, so did the range and complexity of MAC’s tours and activities. From the single trolley tour route of the 1970s, a second was added in 1983 and a third in 1985. In 1984, the four-day Victorian Weekend in October was expanded to a 10-day Victorian Week. Christmas trolley tours were introduced to the holiday season, and special events were launched for February, April and May.

It took one particular event in the 1980s to catapult MAC to its next phase of growth—the "acquisition" of the Cape May Lighthouse. After three years of intensive negotiations, MAC received a long-term lease in 1986 for this 1859-vintage structure. Under the lease, MAC assumed responsibility for the restoration and operation of the Lighthouse as a museum. In 1987, the ground floor was opened to the public and the following year, public safety improvements were made that allowed the public to climb to the top of the tower.

The restoration of the Cape May Lighthouse proved momentous in a number of ways. It offered a new area of interpretation, involving lighthouse and maritime history and technology. It appealed to new audiences — lighthouse buffs and families with children — with the 60,000 visitors in 1988 increasing to over 110,000 by 1997. The Lighthouse also housed MAC’s first Museum Shop.

In the decades since, MAC has continued to make great strides in its efforts to extend the tourism season and offer more to see and do for Cape May’s visitors. In 1990, MAC launched the Cape May Music Festival to bring music lovers to the area during the normally "soft" weeks before the peak summer season. With significant grant support from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and unprecedented contributions from scores of area businesses and individuals, the Music Festival has grown into MAC’s flagship cultural offering. There has also been a continual expansion of Christmas programming, with the number of Candlelight House Tours increased from one to three, a wide variety of offerings added to the calendar, and the holiday season stretched from the weekend before Thanksgiving (Holiday Preview Weekend) to the weekend after New Year’s. In 1996, MAC incorporated the best of October’s Victorian Week into a Spring Victorian Weekend, which has since grown into the 10-day Spring Festival (in partnership with the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Cape May).

Many of MAC’s popular offerings have been made possible by an expanding roster of partners. In conjunction with an association of innkeepers (Historic Accommodations of Cape May), MAC introduced the popular Sherlock Holmes Mystery Weekends in March and November. Cape May’s innkeepers now lend their expertise to an annual workshop on how to acquire, restore and operate a bed-and-breakfast inn (INN Deep Workshop). In 1997, Cape May’s restaurant community joined forces with MAC to launch the Cape May Food and Wine Festival in late September.

MAC has also joined forces with a number of area nonprofits, cosponsoring nature walks and trolley tours with the Nature Center of Cape May; packaging visits to the Cape May Lighthouse with Historic Cold Spring Village, Hereford Inlet Lighthouse and Naval Air Station Wildwood; offering exhibits and programs that celebrate Cape May’s African-American heritage with the Center for Community Arts; running the Doo Wop ‘50s Trolley Tour of the Wildwoods with the Doo Wop Preservation League; and providing marketing outreach and ticket sales for Cape May Stage and the East Lynne Theater Company. With the Delaware River and Bay Authority, MAC offers several packages designed to let visitors leave their cars on the Delaware side and take the Cape May-Lewes Ferry and a shuttle bus to various MAC attractions.

This past decade has also brought major advances in MAC’s administration of its historic sites. The Physick Estate Carriage House was rescued from its languishing condition and, after a major 1996-1997 overhaul, was converted to a multipurpose facility. The Carriage House Gallery hosts an array of changing exhibits while the Twinings Tearoom was launched in the summer of 1999 out of the Carriage House horse stalls and adjoining garden patio.

At the Cape May Lighthouse, the 1989-1990 refurbishing of the tower windows and doors and the Oil House was followed in 1993-1994 by a $600,000 federally and state funded restoration of the lantern and repainting of the tower in its original colors. An additional $750,000 in federal/state grants led to the complete restoration of the Lighthouse structure in 1997-98, while work on the Lighthouse grounds was completed in 2000-01.

New tour offerings, especially in the area of "living history", new areas of interpretation — the U.S. Coast Guard Base; Cape May’s fishing industry; Cape May’s African-American community, and the local impact of World War II — and a more structured educational outreach program were underway as MAC entered the 21st century. In its first 35 years, MAC has been a major force behind Cape May’s dramatic rebirth. For the foreseeable future, it stands ready to help sustain Cape May’s preservation success story.