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Ocean City Hotel
Phillips - A Name Synonymous with Ocean City
In 1956, Brice and Shirley Phillips opened their first “crab shack”, a small carryout with four tables on 21st Street in Ocean City. The shack, specializing in steamed crabs, provided an outlet to sell surplus crabs from the family's Hooper's Island processing plant started by Brice's father, Augustus Phillips. For 12 consecutive years, as business volume flourished, Phillips Crab House kept adding new dining rooms to the original structure, which eventually grew to consume an entire Ocean City block and seat 1400 customers.
Brice and Shirley set their sights on the hotel business in 1967, buying the storied Beach Plaza Hotel at 13th Street on the Boardwalk. Upon purchase the hotel became the Phillips by the Sea Beach Plaza and Dining Restaurant. Over the years the hotel would take on the personality and distinctive traditional décor of the Phillips restaurants with collectibles, antiques, Tiffany Lamp Shades and a whimsical style all of their own.
The Phillips seafood enterprise has continued to prosper under a third generation of family leadership, expanding to seven high-volume restaurants, a growing network of franchises and an international crab processing business.
To this day, the Beach Plaza Hotel remains in the Phillips family. With its storied past and boardwalk location, it persists as an Ocean City classic - the spacious, grand porch inviting you to slow down…relax… and enjoy the pristine Atlantic Ocean views.
