What was it really like to be at a Catskill (Borscht Belt) hotel in the 60-80's
I will continue writing this document as I think of things and fix typos as I see them. I am sure there are many.
I have seen some excellent videos of people respectfully exploring the remains of the hotels of the Catskills, Borscht Belt hotels. I have noticed that many do not fully understand what they are exploring. There are plenty of books and article written about the history of this era but not a lot describing what it was like to be at one of these hotels. You have heard that most of the hotels started as boarding houses and grew over time into the famous and not so famous hotels of the Catskills. My great grandfather in 1906 was one of those pioneers risking financial peril to open a boarding house and ultimately succeeding. My point of view writing this article comes from the three hotels I know best and what I know of the many others. Shawanga Lodge, the Nemerson (DeVille) and the Raleigh Hotels. Shawanga and the Nemerson were the classic older seasonal hotels while the Raleigh was one of the top hotels in the area along with the Concord, Grossingers, Browns, Nevele and the Pines. Yes I left out many fine hotels.
In the beginning, the hotels were open year round, but there was a problem. Heating with fireplaces caused many fires. The original Shawanga Lodge main building burned in 1926 from a chimney spark on the roof. Hotel owners compensated by building many disconnected buildings so that a fire would not be a total loss. That is why the hotels we see in the 70’s and beyond were a maze of sprawling connected buildings. The Nemerson was a perfect example with a dining room and nightclub that were not connected to the main building. In the 20’s and 30’s many hotels gave up staying open all year and opted to open in the early spring and close in the fall. Shawanga and the Nemerson/Deville were seasonal hotels. Being seasonal had it’s challenges, taking bank loans to open the hotel to restock and pay men to get the water and power on, fix and fill the pool, pipes and other problems that winter brought. The beginning of the season was to repay loans, and what was left in the fall was your salary that had to hold you over all winter. In the 50’s many hotels started going back to being open all year, and with oil heat, they tended not to burn down.
Terminology
The main building was the building that housed the hotel lobby and office/front desk. There was a main dining room, which distinguished itself from the children’s, teen and staff dinning rooms. The older hotels had casinos or playhouses. They were not gambling casinos (though there are articles from the 30’s discussing raids from the sheriffs office). The difference between a playhouse and a nightclub, which we started to see in the 50’s was that a playhouse usually had a level floor with chairs set up in rows. A nightclub had tiered levels with cushioned chars around tables and a big stage. Most hotels had cottages for guest rooms, though not usually as nice as other guest rooms.
The hotels had outdoor pools a label used even if the hotel did not have an indoor pool. Probably a left over from the days when people swam in a lake with rope designating the pool area. The out door pool was the center of outdoor afternoon activity. The hotels almost always had tennis courts, even in the 20’s. They had handball courts which later became used as paddle ball courts, volleyball and basketball. In fact the hotels would often compete against one another in the 40’s and 50’s as entertainment for the guests. The handball courts often had the hotel name written across if they could be seen from the road.
All of the hotels had a day camp for the kids so that the parents could relax while their kids had fun while watched by councilors.
The original hotels were modest by today’s standards in 1921 when my great grandfather sold the Morningside Hotel and purchased Shawanga Lodge, he added running water to the guest rooms in the main building. The rooms were small, with the beds taking up most of the space. Hotels like Shawanga, Nemerson in the 60s and early 70’s and many others still had older small rooms and bath on the floor for rooms on the 3rd floor. Today, we think of the top floors as the more desirable rooms for the view, but before elevators were installed, the first floor had the nicest rooms.
Bath on the floor meant that you had a sink in your room and there were shared toilet and showers on the floor that every guest on the floor used. Note also that not all rooms had AC even into the 70’s in the older hotels. There were also rooms that had a shared bathroom with a shower between two rooms. It was usual that a family took those two rooms. If you look at the old rate schedules, you will notice that it has rates for rooms with private bath. The cost for these hotels to keep up with the hotels that modernized early was daunting and thus they could not compete.
What was it really like to be at one of these hotels?
After dinner the kids would either be their own to play in the main building, Shawanga had a lower lobby that was less formal with pinball machines and shuffle board and a canteen, aka a small coffee shop with limited to no seating. Sometimes a rock band would play. At the Raleigh, kids would sit around the lobby and talk (code for the boys wanting to meet the girls), swim at the indoor pool, skate at the indoor rink or hang out playing pinball and arcade games or go to the room below the lobby (oddly called the Nuru Guru) and listen to the rock band.
After the parents had dinner, the younger kids would go to bed while the parents went to the bar and playhouse or nightclub. Older kids could go to the early show and often did. There some baby sitters available but not enough so the hotels had night patrol. This meant that a councilor or member of the the athletic staff would would walk the hallways of the hotel, each one given a floor or building or cottages to watch. They would walk by and if they heard crying, they would call the hotel switchboard operator and tell them the room number. The switchboard operator would call the nightclub or playhouse. If it was a playhouse, a panel with light bulbs behind a number would light up next to the stage and the parents would see their number and walk back to the room to see what is going on. Of course the parents set this up with the Maitre D’ ahead of time.
The kids camp had a lot of activities: Swimming, softball, swings, seesaw, archery, sanboxes, row boats (no life preserver back then), arts and crafts. Hotels such as the Nemerson and Raleigh had the camps behind the hotel, a two minute walk, but Shawanga being spread out on a mountain top, the camp was a ¼ mile, plus, away, 10 or 15 minute walk. So the camp also had hiking and a very old bus to take the kids to and from camp. The bus was also used to bring guest to and from the playhouse which was a decent walk also, especially when it rained.
If you were an adult, you had a slightly different experience. First of all there were guest that came to the hotel all summer. They were called season guests and they arrived when school let out until labor day. Often there were rates for the family weekly and the father just weekends since the father was working. In the mids 70’s at the Raleigh there were only one or two families that were season guests, it was just too expensive, but Shawanga and the Nemerson/Deville had many.
The main activity was the food, breakfast at 7am, lunch 1pm and dinner at 7pm and the weekly cocktail party (more on that later). In the afternoon there was the canteen or coffee shop for ice cream and burgers. And after the rigors of the early show at the playhouse or nightclub, there was the coffee shop for ice cream sundays and burgers. You paid one price and everything except the bar and coffee shop was included. The food was all you can eat and everything was made fresh in house. The hotels had bakeries to make bread and desserts, they even made their own pickles. You would sit at tables with between 10 and 25 at a table. The Maitre D’ would assign guests to a table, good Maitre D’s had an ability to know how to seat people they thought would enjoy each other’s company. When the doors to the dining room opened, everyone would come in at once. The dining rooms were large, seating hundreds in one sitting in round tables that sat 10 to 20 or so people, Shawanga, for example, sat 700 and the Raleigh about 1,500. The busboy or waiter would take your order (the menus rotated weekly) and bring the food one table at a time. There was an appetizer, soup, main dish and dessert. The food was fresh and amazing. The mushroom barley soup at the Raleigh was amazing. As a teen, I would have more than one soup, ok, a few times seven. The hotels served roast beef, steak, duck, chicken and the kitchens were huge with many walk in freezers and refrigerators and spotlessly clean.
After breakfast the adults had the pool, handball, paddleball, volleyball, tennis, dance lessons. On rainy days, a movie in the lobby or playhouse/nightclub. After lunch, the same, plus a softball game and perhaps a beauty contest. The biggest actvity would have to be sunbathing at the outdoor pool. There were also art shows/auctions, the beauty salon, shuffle board, simon-sez, card games (with cash). Bellhops could makes some good tips bringing drinks and cigars to those games. The hotels had a distinctive sound from a distance overlooking these activities. It was a strange cacophony of the sounds of PA systems, balls bouncing and muffled talking.
Adults would dress up for dinner and on Saturday nights they usually wore a suit and tie to dinner until the late 70’s. Before and after dinner the lobby would be busy with people talking with some at the lobby bar. After dinner people would head to the playhouse or nightclub for some Latin music, dancing and then a show. After the show, people would go to the playhouse/nightclub bar and or coffee shop.
The Raleigh went a bit further, it had the night club orchestra, a lounge band, Latin band, disco band and rock band. So many varieties and likely not something you will find today under one roof. At around 6pm the lobby bar would open and the lounge band or Latin band would be playing. After dinner the Latin band or disco band would be playing. It was hopping and lively! Then people would head to the early show which started around 11p. The early show had a singer and comedian. The nightclub employed full orchestras. After the early show the disco band would be playing in the smaller night club, which probably sat 300-400 and another 100 around the bar. The late show would be a dirty comedian or on Monday nights, Mambo night, there would be the disco band, and then the stage would extend and Mambo dancers (just like you saw in the movie Dirty Dancing when Baby and Johnny danced at the hotel in Loch Sheldrake) would perform. Sometime, hard to believe in 2025, they would have midget dancers and strippers (I never personally saw the strippers, though I am told they had them). The Monday Mambo night show ended around 3am. Every Monday night there was a line outside the nightclub gate, mostly staff from other hotels. After a normal early show people would head to the coffee shop before turning in. Many famous entertainers got their start in these hotels. The Pines hotel also had a ‘fun’ night scene. They turned their ski chalet into a hopping bar with a DJ that guests and staff from other hotels would go to. A bit less formal, you might say than the Raleigh Mambo nights.
The hotels would have Cocktail parties, usually on Friday nights, before dinner (dinner would be held later). This was usually held in the nightclub or playhouse. The lounge band would be playing and waiters and bus boys would bring trays of hors d’oeurves and place them on tables. Guests would walk around with the little plates and plastic forks and get all types of hot and cold finger foods such as mini egg rolls, chopped liver, jello, beef, salmon, there was a lot more type of food, I just can not remember.
The staff at the hotels, especially the seasonal hotels employed many college kids on summer break. That changed as the seasonal hotels closed and just the big hotels were left. College staff sometimes joined the guest after their duties were completed. At the pool, the staff would take the lounge chairs near the back, to give guests the best choices. Staff definitely enjoyed the late show bar scene. The senior staff ate in the main dining room while the rest ate in the staff dining room. Some hotels had the staff dining room next to the children’s dining room and got the same food as the guest except that it was usually day old and sometime same day, but no steak. Low level kitchen and ground staff ate in anther ‘less formal dining room’. A big table in the basement or or the back of the kitchen. Many of them were picked up at the Bowery in NYC by agencies and offered to the hotels. Many drank too much or where on the LAM and where unable to hold a steady job. The Staff dining room at Shawanga was the children’s dining room before the kids ate. The Nemerson was behind the kitchen and the Raleigh was next to the children. Teens at Shawanga ate adjacent to the main dining room at the same time with the same menu. At the Raleigh, teens ate in the main dining room in the corner with many long rectangular tables.
Hotel phones; the hotels until, about, the late 80’s to early 90s had a switchboard to connect all of the phones. They were somewhat unique for the US in the 60-80's and deserve some attention. There where room phones, department phones and house phones. All of the rooms had a phone, the front desk, nightclub, pool, athletic shack, car hops, bell hops and the bars had a department phone. House phones where banks of phones in the lobby, inside and outside all around the hotel.
The phones had no dialer, you picked it up and waited for the switchboard operator to pick up. You could ask to connect to a room by number or name, ask for the outdoor pool or lobby bar. Or you could ask to page someone. The paging would be an announcement on the hotel PA system and heard in most public spaces indoors and outdoors. If you were paged, you would go to a house phone and pick up, the switchboard operator would answer and you would tell them that you were paged, they would use cables on the switchboard to physically connect the two lines, flip a switch and you could talk. The switchboard had a hole to plug the cable in for every phone in the hotel. There were small lights, if I remember correctly and green and red light. I think the red light would blink if someone was waiting and green if the line was being used. There were patch chord pairs that were on a spring loaded retractor, you would connect two phones with the pairs.
When the switchboard operator called a phone, they would plug a cable in the receptor, pull a spring loaded switch to ring the line, when the line was answered the switchboard operator would say who was calling and if they accepted the call, the other cable would patch the lines with the flip of a switch. If the switchboard operator was not in a good mood, they might hold the switch and the phone would annoyingly ring until released. The switchboards were old and the frames where usually made of wood. To call outside, you would ask the switchboard operator for an outside line. There were not many outside lines, the number five comes to mind. You would tell the switchboard operator the number, they would dial and then patch in your line. I would sometimes volunteer at the Raleigh to operator the switchboard.
Check in and check outs where when the guests arrive and depated. They were organized chaos. I can describe a check in/out at the Raleigh. A normal check in, the guest would arrive, go to the front desk and then the service desk and the next bellhop up would go with them to their car and get their luggage and bring them to their room. On leaving they would call the switchboard and connect to the service desk or come to the service desk. The bellhop would gather their luggage, the car hop would get their car and the bellhop would load their car. A guest would pay extra to the head carhop to keep their car parked in front.
The big check in/out days at the Raleigh where Thursday, Friday and Sunday (I think I got that right), they were a sight to see. On a Thursday there might be 800-900 in and out on one day. The guest would drive up to the main entrance, bellhops or Athletic staff would unload the car and put the luggage in a holding area. The carhop would park the car. The guest wold check in and then wait in line at the service desk, show their paperwork and the service manager would give the next bellhop in line the keys. Often you would get back from a check in and go to the service manager and without waiting get a key and a guest and be on your way. The faster you worked, the more you made. The bellhop would take the guest to the holding area, they would point out their luggage and you would load it onto the bellhop cart and take them to their room.
Do you recall earlier that the hotels were a sprawling series of connected buildings? The two worst rooms for a bellhop at the Raleigh were the ones on the third floor of the Davis wing. There were two sections with three floors and you had to carry the luggage up the flight of stairs. There were also three steps that you had to go down to get to most of the Davis rooms, which you could usually bounce the bellhop cart down. Going up those three steps was much harder. Worst case, was that the luggage was many small pieces and if you bounced the cart, things would fall off. So you had to unload the cart, reload and then unload again and carry everything up to the third floor. The Davis rooms where quite a long walk, however, I have heard that the Homowack Hotel was worse with reagrd to long hallways. Shawanga would have been bad also, but I was too young to know the details. Every cottage had a flight of stairs and the second floor of Panorama and Holiday in buildings had a a flight of stairs, while the first floor had about 3 steps. The main building had an elevator, but it was small and just a single lift, whereas the Raleigh had 4 elevators and the Nemerson one. The Nemerson also had cottages with steps.
Next being staff: To be written