Birds Eye View of the Fire Island Surf Hotel
With approval from Governor Flower, Jenkins had purchased the debilitated Surf Hotel from proprietor David Sturges S. S. Sammis for the inflated price of between $210,000 and $250,000. In the 1850s Sammis opened the hotel, an immensely popular and profitable summer resort in its time that had fallen into disrepair by the 1890s. After the purchase Jenkins had the site cleaned up and staffed with a manager and physician, and police guards. In anticipation of the passengers of the Normannia and their five-star quarantine, “Forty French cooks and waiters” were requested but never arrived. They “were stopped at Babylon and stoned,” effectively preventing them from embarking for Fire Island. For selling the property to the state as a quarantine site Sammis was threatened with a tar and feathering by unidentified individuals.
