The Depression and Corruption Killed Grandiose Plans for Pinewald

Economic waves swept across Pinewald like Sherman marching to the sea, wiping out grandiose development plans. Recessions and a depression left standing the gem of what was to be a new city in the Berkeley woods, the Royal Pines Hotel, now a health care facility called Crystal Lake Healthcare and Rehabilitation.

It was billed as the centerpiece of a massive development in the roaring 20’s, complete with fine rooms, expensive furnishings, gambling, a prohibition era bar, and a lakefront setting.

Uncle Sam would provide the last push to get the long-promised hotel built. Benjamin W. Sangor, who had 15 subdivisions going at one time around the hotel site, appeared to be in no hurry to build it or the promised 6,600-yard golf course that was luring lot-buyers to the area.

Since Sangor’s promises had reached the public through the U.S. Mail, the government said they had to be kept.

The Royal Pines was not the first hotel in Pinewald. E. S. Farrow had launched the development of Barnegat Park in 1888 as a place for military veterans who served in the Civil War. A large hotel, commissary, church, stable, bank, and homes were built. The U.S. economy tanked in 1891 and the steam went out of Barnegat Park. Buildings, including the hotel, vanished over time in a series of fires.

Sangor, of New York, bought the property at an auction in Asbury Park early in the 1920s and began a massive promotion campaign focused on the recreational and health benefits of the Jersey pinelands and the western shore of Barnegat Bay. Part of the property included land on the bay that is now part of the Glen Cove development.

The promise was not only of the hotel, golf course, and sailing on Barnegat Bay. It also included tennis courts, an athletic field, hunting, horseback riding, playgrounds, a community center, garage, stores and a 1,500 acre game preserve.

Trains bought lots of buyers to Pinewald, like lots of other emerging communities in Ocean County. Sometimes the same lot was sold to two buyers. Other times Sangor did not own the land his company was selling.

The title mess would be left for Berkeley Township officials to try to resolve decades later, by foreclosing where taxes had not been paid and trying to recreate land that could be sold and developed. Paper streets, lines on maps, confounded officials because property owners who were paying taxes wanted to use their land. Without an improved street, that was illegal.

Work on the centerpiece hotel began in 1929, after Sangor spent $300,000 enlarging Crystal Lake. The eight-story building, with 231 feet of frontage on the lake, would include 200 rooms. New York City architect W. Oltar-Jevesky did the ornate design in the Spanish renaissance.

Construction started on July 15, 1929 and before it was completed, the hotel cost $1.2 million to build. It was perfect for Sangor’s “self-contained little city of charm and convenience.’’ The first class hotel needed first class management. Sangor brought Alfred Palmer, who had managed the Hotel Astor in New York City, to run the Royal Pines.

There was a pavilion on the bay at the foot of Butler Boulevard, the Pinewald Villa on Central Boulevard and the Pinewald train station,

The Royal Pines golf course was designed by Don MacKay of Ohio and opened on Nov. 18, 1930. Construction of the 6,600 yard, par 72, course took four years. P.S. Honeyman, billed as the “teacher of presidents,’’ was the pro.

Before the hotel opened in November 1930, the stock market crashed, signaling the Great Depression. Prohibition ended, erasing one of the lures of the grand hotel. Sangor had sold an estimated 8,000 lots, worth $11.5 million, but the economic collapse soon had New Jersey Secretary of State Thomas A. Mathis of Toms River, who had been named receiver for Sangor’s company, again seeking buyers for the hotel.

By 1934 two sales had been held. Each time the buyer defaulted on the payments.

A Pennsylvania school and the Wenonah Military Academy showed interest in the building, but submitted no bids. Eventually a succession of doctors bought the building and converted it to a hospital and a nursing home.

Sangor was in trouble too, charged, and later convicted, of embezzlement. He was a director of  a Toms River bank headed by the owner of the title insurance company that was guaranteeing title to Sangor’s lots in Pinewald. The bank was named executor of an $172,000 estate. Sangor and the bank director swapped $84,000 in Pines Hotel bonds for the valuable securities in the estate. The bank failed and both were eventually convicted, fined and sent to prison.

Fires later wiped out the Pinewald Villa and the pavilion on the bay. The railroad station was torn down in the 1976. Central Regional High School and Middle School, along with Veteran’s Park, are located on part of the old golf course. The municipal course, Cedar Creek, built by Berkeley Township, is located near the old one.