It’s snowing outside and the boardwalk is an icy accident waiting to happen, yet inside the Sun and Star rooftop café in Atlantic City, temperatures appear to be a little unseasonal for this time of year…
Visiting Atlantic City in January, you most likely wouldn’t have your bikini and sunglasses in tow, but in the winter of 1948, the Senator Hotel had a secret weapon for attracting guests all year round. Perched above the snow-capped buildings of the seaside resort, this skyscraper hotel boasted a portal to the tropics with a modern sky cabana equipped with state of the art sunlamps, sun loungers and most importantly, lots of ice cream on the menu …
Of course, the question has to be raised; how safe (or rather, unsafe) was this Sun and Star Roof, and what kind of sunlamps were they using that didn’t require guests to even wear protective goggles?
Photographed by LIFE photographer, Nina Leen, this is another forgotten photo story I’ve fished out of their archives with little information to go along with it, other than,”Roof Sunlamps, Senator Hotel, Atlantic City, January 1948″.
This was an era when the notion of preventing sun damage and skin cancer just didn’t exist and sun ray treatment was actually medically prescribed to help the condition of your skin. But of course, you won’t find many doctors and nurses running tanning salons today…
Below, I dug up this 1950s General Electric advertisement selling sunlamps that “you can use anywhere– bedroom, playroom, bathroom”, promoting the use of sunlamps for young children.
In googling the dangers of vintage sunlamps, I came across an article on ‘The Early Days of Sunlamps’ that states: “It is possible that much of the increase in skin cancer seen today in senior citizens was caused by the overexposure resulting from using these tabletop tanning devices.”
Our bundled-up girl on the other side was better off staying outside…
It doesn’t appear the sun-seeking patrons of the Senator Hotel were under any time constraints on their exposure to the sun lamps either…
As much fun as it looks to strip down to your polka dot bikini and play mini golf while the blizzard rages on just outside, it’s just a little alarming to see how blissfully unaware all this was. Then again, if someone had told me I could step out of this bone-chilling winter into summer through a single doorway, sip cocktails and eat ice cream at the same time, and doctors recommend it– hey, I’d probably be the first in line with my polka dots and flip flops.
The Senator Hotel was demolished in 1998.
Photos (c) LIFE archives
