Editing Berkeley Township, New Jersey (section)

==History==
Army officer Lt. Edward Farrow began buying up woodland in the 1880s with the idea of building a retirement community for former Army and Navy officers. Farrow built a railroad station, shops and even a resort hotel called The Pines with the idea of attracting people. But only 11 people ever built houses in what Farrow called "Barnegat Park," and eventually he went bankrupt.<ref>Moore, Kirk. [https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/app/access/1713024661.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Mar+30%2C+2008&author=KIRK+MOORE&pub=Asbury+Park+Press&desc=Grand+plans+for+%22Pinewald-On-The-Bay%22+died+in+the+Depression&pqatl=google "Grand plans for 'Pinewald-On-The-Bay' died in the Depression"]{{dead link|date=July 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}, ''[[Asbury Park Press]]'', March 30, 2008. Accessed August 13, 2012.</ref>

In the 1920s, [[Benjamin W. Sangor]] purchased the area, intending to create a resort town catering to wealthy urban vacationers. Between 1928 and 1929, about 8,000 lots were sold in [[Pinewald, New Jersey|Pinewald]], a "new-type, residential, recreational city-of-the sea-and-pines." It was to contain a golf course, recreation facilities, and estate homes.<ref>Schweiger, Tristan J. [https://archive.today/20130131163334/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/app/access/1734529621.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Feb+08,+2007&author=TRISTAN+J+SCHWEIGER&pub=Asbury+Park+Press&desc=Berkeley+has+had+many+names&pqatl=google "Berkeley has had many names"], ''[[Asbury Park Press]]'', February 8, 2007. Accessed May 14, 2013.</ref>

The developers immediately began construction of the Pinewald pavilion and pier at the end of Butler Avenue. The Royal Pines Hotel, a $1.175 million investment facing Crystal Lake, was built on the site of an earlier hotel dating back to the days of Barnegat Park.<ref>[http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/nj1/chap6a.htm Resort Development in the Twentieth Century], ''An Historic Theme Study of the'', [[National Park Service]]. Accessed October 14, 2007.</ref> It was the focal point of the new community. The hotel was also used as an asylum, then later a nursing home now known as the Crystal Lake Nursing & Rehabilitation Center.

The hotel was constructed by Russian architect W. Oltar-Jevsky in the early 1920s. [[Al Capone]] may have frequented its halls, perhaps even venturing beneath the lake in tunnels especially designed for smuggling alcohol during [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]]. One newspaper article interviewed an unidentified man who claimed that "in the early 1930s the then Royal Pines Hotel was frequented by society's elite who, for $1.90 a drink, consumed prohibition liquor under the watchful eye of men who had guns strapped under their coats." In 1929, during the [[Great Depression]], this resort community also went bankrupt.