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. 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, the resort community went bankrupt.