The Catskills: "A Place Full of Miracles"

In a way, the history of the Catskill Mountains resorts almost resembles a bedtime story, a real-life retelling of The Little Red Hen:??

Once upon a time, a group of people were excluded from the activities everyone else enjoyed.? So the group traveled into the mountains and built themselves a place so wonderful that everyone else wanted to visit there too.

But the reality is rooted in the ugliness of bigotry, and the intolerance that seems to weave like a snake through our heritage as Americans:?

In the early part of the 20th Century, Americans of Jewish descent were excluded by antisemitism from the popular recreational resorts enjoyed by other citizens of the United States.

So the Jewish Americans established for themselves in the mountains of New York State a kind of stylized American Utopia:? A family-oriented vacation resort resembling a sanitized version of Las Vegas, a place where bigotry did not exist and where people of all backgrounds could enjoy comfortable lodging, gourmet dining, family activities--and some of the best entertainment available anywhere in the world.

The idyllic resort center the Jewish Americans established was located in New York’s Catskill Mountains, a few hours’ drive from downtown New York City.? The area was nicknamed “The Borscht Belt” by the waggish editor of the entertainment newspaper Variety, a playful corruption of the beetroot soup popular in predominantly Jewish regions of Eastern Europe and the colloquial nicknames for other American regions, such as the Bible Belt and the Rust Belt.??

The nickname stuck, and entered both the national lexicon and the public consciousness--and also became an integral part of modern American folklore.? Tales of the Borscht Belt and the entertainment produced in the showrooms and nightclubs of Catskills resort centers such as Kutsher’s and Grossinger’s remain legendary to this day.

The Catskill Mountains became a tourist destination in the late 1800s because of the agreeable climate, the beauty of the landscape, and the rivers and streams rich in trout--ideal for the rising popularity of fly fishing.? Because of the area’s close proximity to the urban labyrinths of New York City, the residents of the city virtually flocked to the Catskill Mountains to enjoy the cool weather and natural resources available there.

But well into the 20th century, many hotels, inns, and boarding houses refused to accept Jewish guests or patrons.? Antisemitism and bigotry were the order of the day.? A Jewish businessman in Atlanta, convicted unjustly in 1915 for the murder of an employee, was lynched as his case was pending appeal.? The Ku Klux Klan, dormant since President Grant’s Anti-Klan Acts in 1871, experienced a surge in renewed popularity as a result of the success of filmmaker D.W. Griffith’s 1915 Civil War epic “The Birth of a Nation,” which depicted the terrorists as heroes.

Because of the refusal of Catskills-based hotels to accept Jewish guests, a need for alternative lodging was created.? By the early years of the 20th century, the hotels and boarding houses that had flourished during the last decades of the 1800s began to struggle and close.? Their aging owners began to sell off the old properties at reduced prices, and many were purchased by Jewish families who wanted to put down roots in the Catskills.

Sullivan and Ulster Counties and some of the bordering areas in New York State also offered working-class Jewish New Yorkers land to purchase at affordable prices, on which they could build farms, businesses, bungalow colonies--and hotels.? Many of the Jewish families had emigrated from farmlands of Eastern Europe and Russia, and the pastoral beauty and cool weather of the Catskills reminded them of their homeland more than the tenements, crowded streets, hot summers, and dirty air of New York City.?

A number of hotels and boarding houses catering to Jewish patrons began to open in the first decades of the 20th century.? Kutsher’s, originally called Kutsher’s Brothers Farm House, was established in 1907 near Monticello, New York.? Grossinger’s Terrace Hill House opened in 1919 on 100 acres of Sullivan County.? Along with the Concord Resort Hotel in Kiamesha Lake, Kutsher’s and Grossinger’s eventually became among the largest and most prosperous resort hotels in the Borscht Belt.?

A bountiful selection of “kosher” Jewish cuisine was an essential feature of the hotels of the Catskills, as was a wholesome, healthy ambiance.? Family activities were emphasized at the Jewish-owned Catskills hotels--tennis, croquet, badminton, cycling.? During the wintertime, the terrain was ideal for skiing.? Noted for the excellent hospitality standards the Jewish-owned hotels and resorts thrived--and grew.? By the time of the area’s peak popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, the Catskills boasted over 500 resorts.

The largest of the resort hotels was Grossinger’s, formerly Grossinger’s Terrace Hill House.? Under the direction of family matriarch Jennie Grossinger, the hotel had expanded over the years from its beginnings as a boardinghouse to encompass 35 separate buildings by the 1950s.? The resort’s main structure contained an enormous dining room capable of seating 1300 guests.? Beneath the dining room was a cavernous nightclub called The Terrace Room.? Grossinger’s maintained its own post office and airstrip.

Tania Grossinger, Jennie’s niece, remembered Grossinger’s as “three different hotels operated under the same roof--one for conventioneers, one for regular guests, couples, or families, and one for singles.”? Some of the resort’s more affluent families booked lodging for the entire summer, with the breadwinner returning to New York City during weekdays and commuting back to the resort on weekends.? In 1952, Grossinger’s became the first resort in the world to create its own snow for the ski slopes.

Kutsher’s Resort Hotel and Country Club was a more sports-oriented establishment.? Legendary Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach maintained a home at Kutsher’s during the 1950s, and occasionally toiled as the hotel’s athletic director.? It was at Kutsher’s that Auerbach first encountered a six-foot eleven-inch bellhop named Wilt Chamberlain.? Recently graduated from Philadelphia’s Overbrook High School, young Chamberlain delighted guests (and earned enormous tips) by delivering luggage to second-story balconies while standing outside in the parking lot.

While other Catskills resorts were developing enormous indoor swimming pools for their guests during the 1950s, owner Milton Kutsher insisted on instead building a golf course on the property.? Eventually, the resort’s 6843-yard greens became one of the top courses on the East Coast and a major source of revenue for the hotel.? Both Kutsher’s Sports Academy and Kutsher’s Camp Anawana, a sleepaway camp for children, were also located on the grounds of the resort.

The Catskills resorts were untainted by bigotry or social exclusion.? Noted for their superb entertainment, the resorts periodically boasted top-quality musical acts such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie, along with their big bands.? And while the hotels of Las Vegas and Atlantic City would feature such entertainers in their nightclubs and showrooms but insist they find lodging at lower-status hotels, African-American performers were treated at the Catskills resorts as honored guests and assigned premium lodging.

But in the showrooms and auditoriums of the Catskills, comedy was king.? The who's who of noted comics who often entertained hotel guests in the nightclubs of the resort hotels included Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, George Burns, Sid Caesar, Rodney Dangerfield, Buddy Hackett, Danny Kaye, Joan Rivers, Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles--and even a very young Jerry Seinfeld, then just beginning his career as a comic.? During the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, blacklisted entertainers such as Zero Mostel could also still find work in the Catskills nightclubs.

The decline of the Catskills resorts began during the mid-1960s when two disparate events occurred that moved the world forward but proved fatal to the area’s hospitality industry.? First, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Johnson.? The new law prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.? Overnight, exclusion was ended, and individuals and families of Jewish ancestry could spend their vacations anywhere in the United States.? Many did.

The second event was the proliferation of affordable air travel.? In the same amount of time required for a family to drive from New York City to their favorite vacation resort in the Catskills, they could now board an airliner and fly to nearly any destination on the East Coast.? Popular resorts such as Kutsher’s and Grossinger’s began to struggle to lure back even their most loyal longtime customers--especially younger ones.? For the first time, the resort hotels found themselves in a financial crunch.

Grossinger’s was able to remain in operation for years on the strength of its longtime regular guests, its entertainment attractions, and its ski slopes during wintertime.? By the area’s heyday during the late 1950s, some 30% of the business of the Catskills resorts was non-Jewish, and Grossinger’s remained solvent.? But when hotel director and family matriarch Jennie Grossinger died in 1972, the real decline began.? The greatest of the Catskills resorts closed forever in 1986.

Kutsher’s was able to remain open the longest.? In November of 2007, the resort’s publicity staff sent letters to its longtime regular guests informing them that the hotel was temporarily closing for renovations and that no reservations would be available during the following summer season.? Reopened as The New Kutsher’s Resort & Spa, the hotel briefly gained new popularity by hosting music festivals and trade conventions.? But when the resort’s driving force, Helen Kutsher, died in 2013, the hotel folded soon afterward.

Some of the hotels and resorts of the Catskills were sold off and eventually reopened as health spas, religious retreats, wellness centers, rehabilitation facilities, and summer camps.? But for years, many stood deserted, vacant and forgotten, slowly being reclaimed by nature and the elements.? Eventually, the structures were demolished.? The era of the great Catskills resorts was over--and so was a way of life, faded into legend.

Still, during the first half of the 20th century, the Catskills contained a sort of magic.? “The Catskills were full of miracles, after all,” wrote Phil Brown, the author of “Catskills Culture.”? “To make a place for the Jewish working class to get some fresh air, that’s a miracle.? To turn a little boardinghouse into a first-rate hotel--that’s a miracle.”