Benjamin W. Sangor

Early life and Pinewald

Benjamin W. Sangor was born in Russia and emigrated in 1904 to the United States, where he was naturalized an American citizen in 1914 and became an attorney. On October 1, 1925, a Benjamin Sanger (with an "e") married Etta Weidenfeld at the Hotel Martinique in Manhattan, New York City, though it is unclear if this is the same Sangor and if so, whether he had been married previously — since by 1940, his grown daughter Jacquelyn Sanger (as her last name is spelled in The New York Times) of Chicago had married pulp magazine publisher Ned Pines, founder of Standard Comics. At some point, Sangor had a wife named Francis.

An entrepreneur, Sangor established B.W. Sangor & Company by at least October 1925, when the concern issued stock to develop the resort community of Pinewald, New Jersey, on Barnegat Bay. This included the development of an 18-hole golf course and the Spanish Renaissance-style Royal Pine Hotel, built by the Sangor Hotel Corporation. About 8,000 lots were sold between 1928 and 1929. The firm was located at 1457 Broadway in Manhattan by at least September 1926, the year it began developing Pinewald — although "Help Wanted" classified ads that same month give a company address of 187 Joralemon Street in Brooklyn in relation to an event to help "German-speaking men and women interested in improving their money-making possibilities."

In January 1930, B.W. Sangor & Co. was sued in the Appellate Term of the New York Supreme Court over a claim that the company had breached state insurance law because of a clause giving the widow of a purchaser a clear deed. At some point during this Great Depression era, the company went bankrupt, and by June 1930, a Pinewald amphitheater was being planned for construction by George A. Raker & Co., whose company principal had been Sangor's general manager two years earlier.

In February 1935, previously quashed indictments were reinstated by the New Jersey Supreme Court against Sangor and Anthony M. Then — the chairman and president, respectively, of the Toms River Trust Company — charging embezzlement and larceny of $81,320 in securities. On November 2, the two were convicted after a three-week jury trial in Ocean County Common Pleas Court and each sentenced to one to three years in prison and a $1,000 fine. They appealed their convictions in 1936, and their sentences in 1937, but eventually surrendered themselves on January 31, 1938, to serve time at the state prison in Trenton, New Jersey. Sangor also was an organizer of the Prudence Bondholders Protective Association, which underwent bankruptcy reorganization in 1935.