Ben Massell

Temple Members

(1886 - 1962)

Ben Massell, a native of Lithuania, immigrated with his family to the U.S. when he was two-years-old. Massell moved away from management of a grocery store to launch Massell Properties in 1918. The commercial real estate shop developed storefronts and commercial buildings throughout Atlanta during an era of significant economic growth. Many properties along Peachtree, West Peachtree, Ponce de Leon, and Pershing Point to Downtown were Massell developments. By 1953, Massell had built 1,200 buildings leading the former Mayor William Hartsfield to call him “a one-man boom.”

Massell’s daughter Caroline married Simon “Slick” Selig, president of Selig Chemicals, in 1939. After Ben Massell’s death, the Massell and Selig families joined together in a business partnership to create CMS Realty and, eventually, Selig Enterprises. Massell’s economic status followed a national trend: he made one fortune in the early 1900s, lost it all in the Great Depression, and made another one after World War II. A 1959 Atlanta Constitution profile read, “His career is like Atlanta’s History, both got burned, then built anew and agreed they had done better the second time.”

In 1959, Ben Massell, with help from the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, secured the Morris Hirsch Clinic, a center that provided outpatient medical and dental services to those unable to afford care, a new home on 7th street in Midtown Atlanta. In honor of his involvement, assistance, and financial generosity, the clinic was renamed the Ben Massell Dental Clinic.