Cape May’s Sea Mist Remade

CAPE MAY — It’s owner has coined a phrase for its architectural style: “steamboat.”
The newly reconstructed Sea Mist at 927 Beach Ave. seems to be all windows and porches. The porches make the structure, built in 1873, resemble a steamboat with white railings topped with red trim.
Decks extend for four floors with a red roofed cupola on top flying an American Flag. The former guesthouse, which had 13 apartments, has been converted into eight luxury condominiums.
The Sea Mist is a Cape May landmark. It has been featured on postcards and in paintings.
Fisherman will tell you they use the cupola as navigation point. Owner Barry Sharer said the building is illuminated at night and is visible to boaters.
He ended two and a half years of construction with a private opening party on Aug. 8.
The renovation was more expensive than originally planned said Sharer. He said a lot of wood rot was discovered during the renovation.
“The foundations were in bad shape, the floors were very uneven due to that,” he said.
The building was jacked up and a portion of the foundation was replaced along with new pilings. Sharer said many support beams were replaced.
Two units have been sold. The top of the Sea Mist is a penthouse, which include the famous cupola. That unit is priced at $2.3 million.
The views from the penthouse are spectacular with vistas of rolling waves of the ocean across the street.
The penthouse living room features a fireplace with a red and white sailboat on the mantle. Bedrooms, which are decorated in a nautical motif, are small in size, about what one would expect from a cottage at the shore.
Sharer describes views from the Sea Mist as “exceptional and unusual.”
“There’s not that many homes in Cape May that have decks on every floor and for us, for every unit,” he said.
The lowest priced unit was $499,000. The building now has an elevator.
The Sea Mist’s unusual appearance can be credited to additions constructed in 1910 and again in the 1960s when the third and fourth floor and cupola was added, said Sharer.
Out-of-towners that passed by the Sea Mist last summer may have theorized there had been a fire since the building was down to bare framing. The newly reconstructed building still stops passerbys in their tracks.
Folks standing on the sidewalk pointed up to this reporter with his cameras standing in the rooftop cupola.
See a video tour of the Sea Mist at capemaycountyherald.com