Archaeology in the Catskills

Source: Pinterest

My parents and I have started a pretty nice tradition: once a year I spend a day or two with one of them just-the-two-of-us.  We try to do something out of the day-to-day so that we can connect in ways that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

Why wouldn't it be possible otherwise, you might ask.  Our stages-of-life may help answer that question.  I'm 51, married with two kids in college, a full-time job and I live in a suburb of Boston.  My parents are in their 70s, retired, and split their time between Connecticut (summers) and Florida (winters).

While we have many opportunities to connect with one another - at birthdays, holidays and even "family-reunion" vacation time, those invariably become ensemble events, with little time to connect one-on-one with family members beyond the occasional conversation, inevitably interrupted when it’s time to sing Happy Birthday or get dressed for some ceremony.

I asked Dad what he wanted to do this year, and he chose the Catskills.  As I learned in much more detail over the course of the weekend, Dad had fond memories of family vacations and of growing up there.  He wanted to share some of that with me.

I knew the Catskills were once the most popular getaway from New York City in hot summer months, especially for the Jewish community.  The Borscht Belt was famous for its resort hotels and for attracting some of the best entertainers - particularly comedians - in the world.  

Still, I was skeptical that this was the best use of our time.  Online research warned me away, explaining that all that remained of this wonderland were depressing ruins in an area still trying to find a way to recover from the sudden loss of tourism when the people stopped coming.  I was worried there’d be nothing to see or do.  I secretly planned several activities around hiking, fishing and scenic views as a backup plan in case we found the area completely useless for reminiscing.

Turns out my skepticism was justified in one way: the area is now so far disconnected from its past glory that it was difficult to find any location or structure that my father could actually remember. 

But my skepticism turned out to be unwarranted after all!  We ended up having a great time and still connected with each other and with his past!  It turns out you don’t need to be in the Colosseum to learn about Rome; at least not if you have a real live Gladiator to teach you.  My father was able to fill in all the gaps from the precious little clues we found on what turned out to be an archaeology mission in the Catskills.

Huguenot Hotel

We started with one of Dad’s more recent memories: The Hotel Huguenot in Huguenot (which may be administered by a town called Deer Park), NY.  This place was special because it actually had two lives for Dad.  First, it was the location of several summer vacations with his family: a favorite spot he and his extended family would visit repeatedly.  I got a feel for what these resorts were like   when he explained they learned songs, and that they even put on shows with songs and costumes, for the others guests.  He remembered having to dress up as a girl to play a part.  It was like camp with the family. 

Postcard showing Hotel Huguenot in the 1930s.  Source: Boston Public Library Collection

Second, he returned when he was college-age on what sounded like a pretty risqué trip with his future wife (yes: happily this story was about Mom).  He drove up from New York in the summer with his girlfriend to visit his cousin Richard who was up at the hotel for the summer.  It was planned as an all-day trip, and Mom’s parents were a little nervous about letting her go.  Things got pretty dicey when there was a massive rainstorm, delaying them in both directions as they tried to wait out the storm.  They ended up returning Mom to her worried parents in Queens at around 2:00am.

We meandered into town from Port Jervis, from where Dad remembered approaching years ago.  When we hit the uniquely named Neversink Road, he explained we were on the right track.  He remembered the road name.  We knew we were close.

For the next 45 minutes we zig-zagged through the town, blindly looking for the ancient building or for someone who could direct us.  On a quiet Saturday we found no one outside to ask, and no trace of the building.  Dad’s Internet searches had yielded the photo above, and it had a Google Maps marker in it that we tried to find, but quickly realized it was marking the town and not the hotel itself.  We tried in-town and out-of-town, rolling down a beautiful dirt-road until it dead-ended at train tracks, exploring side-roads and main roads, and three times following promising leads to eventually find ourselves well out of town, and turning back.

While we did not find the hotel itself, I’m still pretty sure we found the general 2-3 block area where it once stood.  Nestled in the same area was a tantalizingly-close source of information. We found the Deer Park Museum: an 1863 school house converted into a historical society of the area.  Alas, it was closed for the day.  We moved on.

The Deer Park Museum was a potential source of information but was closed on Saturdays.

When we returned home I re-ran my Internet searches with the new information that "Deer Park" was a valid search term when seeking information on the Huguenot Hotel.  I found a book on Deer Park history that showed that the hotel was on the main road, though I still never got an actual address for the site of the hotel.

Source: Images of America: Deerpark

Monticello

Our next target was Monticello which Dad remembered as the largest town in the area, and one of two towns used as a gathering point for the arriving summer labor force.  Transportation dropped young people from New York here, and employment agencies would find work for them.

We settled in at the friendly Miss Monticello Diner for lunch.  Earlier Dad had told me about the traditional waypoint diner that “everyone" visited on the approach to the Catskills: the Red Apple Rest, but a little research confirmed it was gone as of 2007.  We enjoyed the diner on Broadway that served quality large portions at a reasonable price.  Across the street from the Miss Monticello Diner was an example of what we expected to find around the Catskills, a dilapidated hotel from the 1930s whose floors, we joked, we clearly not level.  We'd skip that hotel, we said, until we found one with floors that didn't sag.

Old hotel in Monticello.  Source: Google Street View

Over lunch, Dad told me how he’d arrived at 14 years-old off a bus from New York, traveling alone, looking for a job (Dad had arrived in Liberty, the next town we’d visit).  He  found his way to an employment office, filled out the forms, and sat there “for hours” until one of the hotel managers who were filtering through the office select him and a few others as waiters.  He carted Dad and the others to the hotel where they’d work the entire summer serving six meals a day (the children ate each meal before the adults, so it meant breakfast, lunch and dinner two times).

An employment form from an agency in the Catskills, similar to the one Dad used to find his first job. 

Source: Liberty Museum and Art Center

Dad also explained that pancakes was his go-to meal when he lived in the Catskills, and not just for breakfast.  They were filling, delicious and cheap - so he ended up eating them anytime he ate out.  Now that he’s a bit more affluent he chose to order an omelet, though, for our lunch at the diner.

Liberty

Out next stop was Liberty: the town Dad stopped at to get his first job, and after our failure to find any actual buildings in Huguenot, we spotted an opportunity.  We saw signs for an (open) history museum called the Liberty Museum and Art Center.

The museum was a great stop for us.  We not only got to speak to the gentleman at the desk who provided a great deal of local color and suggestions on where we could find some of the remaining hotels, but we also found a great exhibit displaying photos and souvenirs from the local hotels.  The exhibit focused on Grossinger’s, which was one of the largest hotels in the Catskills and had been located less than a mile away.  Some of the buildings were even still standing.

We left the museum and tried to find some of those hotels, including Grossinger’s and the Kleins Hillside Hotel.  It turns out we were in the wrong town for the Klein’s Hillside, and while we saw the Grossinger’s ruins from afar, we could not get close enough to take photos ourselves.

Even as we didn’t find the actual hotels, Dad continued to fill in the blanks for me.  Wandering through Liberty we saw the town that once catered to all the arriving labor.  The memories started flowing and I heard about his time as a waiter, how he slept in a barn with the other workers, hid stains on his black uniform by pouring dark coffee over the stain to hide it, and how he got a reputation as the milk-boy because he got caught stealing glasses of milk for himself to drink.

Interestingly, Dad told me waiting and bussing tables was one of the worst-fit jobs he ever had, giving him great respect for the people who actually do it well.  It was hard manual work for tips as the only way to actually make money. Most importantly to him, he had few opportunities to learn and expand his perspective.  Later in life he’d explore music and engineering which he found were much more exciting and he made great contributions to, and learned a great deal in, those fields.

South Fallsburg

Now we were getting annoyed: still no actual building to visit that Dad had remembered.  It hurt that Dad had not stayed or worked in the larger hotels that still stood or had more information available.  But Dad had an ace in the hole: the Raleigh Hotel.

Source: Exhibit at Sullivan County Historical Society

Within a couple of summers Dad abandoned the waiter jobs and instead worked in the Catskills as a piano player and band leader.  It was a different process to get the job: Dad assembled the band and got the summer booked in New York before arriving.  He worked in a small hotel and his gigs were nightly after dinner until 10-11pm.  Then he’d be done for the night.

He and his fellow band-members would regularly walk from their smaller venue to a much larger hotel that was less than a mile down the road and they’d watch (and often sit in with) the musicians who played much later into the night at the larger venue.  Dad was pretty sure he remembered this larger hotel was the Raleigh Hotel.

And we knew that the Raleigh Hotel was still standing and operating as a hotel because they were on the Internet and he’d called them the previous week and they’d said they were booked!  Most importantly, we had an actual address for the hotel so we knew where to go.

As we approached we looked for sites that might be the smaller hotel Dad played at.  He thinks it was called the Lincoln, but we saw no sign of it.  (Later we found a listing for a Lincoln Hotel in Parksville, but never found the actual building.)

We did find the Raleigh Hotel, though, and realized the woman who said they were “booked" may have been speaking facetiously.  The place was gated, locked and seemed to be undergoing renovations to be turned into condominiums.  A little additional research showed that the hotel had been through several attempts at resurrection over the years, and this appeared to be the latest one.

Hurleyville

Stymied again, I suggested we try to get more guidance at another nearby museum in Hurleyville. This museum wasn’t just for one town as the Deer Park and Liberty museums were: this museum covered the history of all of Sullivan County and was listed as open until 4pm.

We quickly found the building and discovered that the museum included a Borsht Belt exhibit.  We enjoyed seeing more photos of the hotels, including one of the Raleigh; but the treasure trove for us was a book that listed every known hotel in the area!  The book was organized by town and enumerated over 700 hotels large and small.  We found the Raleigh and Lincoln and we noted that the Lincoln had been owned by the Peltz family, and was in Parksville on "old route 17.”  We added this to our target list.

We also found a listing for the Alpine Hotel.  Dad had mentioned the Alpine as one of his earliest memories of the Catskills.  He thinks he was less than four years old when his family took him there, but he was still able to perfectly perform the song they had taught him that year, which extolled the virtues of leaving your job and cares from the city behind you to enjoy the summer.

The listing in the book was somewhat specific, mentioning that the Alpine was “opposite [the] old theater building” in Fallsburg.  A clue to go on - so off we went!

Listing for Alpine Hotel.  Source: book in Sullivan County Historical Society’s Borscht Belt Exhibit

Fallsburg

After some twists and turns on the road we found the only theater in town and it was clearly "old."  The Rivoli was now doing live theater for a local company and was unfortunately locked up for the day.

Dad in front of the Rivoli Theater

The town was an interesting mix of decaying buildings and signs of resurgence.  Old buildings were paired with freshly paved sidewalks and street signals.  Some buildings were being demolished, others being rebuilt.  The population was an unusual mix of latin residents and orthodox jews: a latin supermarket next door to a jewish bakery.

Across the street were several buildings and lots, any one of which could have been the Alpine Hotel.  We walked the town and the lots, and tried to find the pond or lake that Dad remembered being on or near the property, but found only a damp-but-overgrown bog nearby behind the post-office.  It was probably the lake a it did back up to one of the potential sites of the hotel.

Charming old home for sale across the street from the theater in Fallsburg.  Possible site of Alpine Hotel?

Parksville

Next stop: the Lincoln Hotel, which we saw listed in the book as having been on “Old Route 17.”  We knew about this road.  Route 17 is the main thoroughfare Dad remembered that everyone used to come into the Catskills.  It was, as all highways were at the time, a two-lane road that slowed as it wound through each town along the way.  It has recently been replaced by a modern super-highway, but old route 17 still exists paralleling the new road.  Locals still call it “old 17” but near Parksville it is now officially called Parksville Road.

We pulled into a Mobil station to fill up and in the convenience store Dad struck up a conversation with an older gentleman reading a newspaper.  “Not to insult you,” he said “but you look like you may have lived around here long enough to remember some of the older hotels.”  He pointed us in the direction of a few structures you could access from the road and we went exploring.

The Lincoln Hotel, or a hotel really, really close to it.

And explore we did: we found a building that we simply assumed was the Lincoln Hotel.  It had all the items that Dad remembered about his first job as a waiter.  First, it was close to Liberty, which matched where his bus dropped him off his first summer.  The buildings we found had a separate barn which matched his recollection of where he slept that summer.  There was a swimming pool - or what was left of a pool - across the street.

Swimming pool in front of the Lincoln Hotel, or a hotel close to it.

Drive to Honesdale, PA

It was getting later in the day and we had to decide on next steps.  We’d made no hotel reservations, preferring to “play things by ear” as we worked our way around the area.  Dad made the call: there was just one more stop he wanted to make before we headed back, but this place was not close to the other hotels, Dad just knew it was in the general area.

So we decided to head in the direction of Camp Equinunk, where Dad had gone to camp for three summers as a youngster.  Dad had researched it and knew that the camp still existed and still operated as a summer camp.  Our plan was to get as close as possible to the camp, then find a place to eat and rest for the night.

GPS was our friend and provided a great route, about an hours drive to Honesdale, the closest real town to the camp.

The mountains and forests and streams were beautiful in the Catskills, but were marred by decaying buildings and general sense of disrepair.   However, something interesting happened as we drove through the towns immediately to the west of the Catskills and into northeastern Pennsylvania.   As the squalor diminished the beauty of the natural landscape was able to shine through unencumbered.  It was eye-opening and really beautiful as the day slowly faded through the clouds and trees.

Honesdale, PA

That night we put ourselves into the hands of the proprietors of the Hotel Wayne, where we chose to stay and dine for the night.  It was an historic building in the town, having housed the dignitaries who first financed the canal that helped put Honesdale on the map.  Now it was an aging building trying to survive on its connection with the past.  In fact, the night we were there an episode of Ghostfinders was being filmed, seeking signs of the many spirits that had been detected in the hotel over the past century.

The reality is that the hotel is a very old building with a management team trying to keep it habitable for modern visitors.  They put air conditioners in the windows, crammed tiny toilets / showers into old closets, and installed wifi in all the rooms.  A good attempt, but it was difficult to completely ignore the buckling floors and creaky stairs.  For Dad and I, room 207 had a real charm we enjoyed, despite our joking earlier in Monticello that we wanted a hotel with even floors.  We both agreed our wives may not have been as forgiving for the lack of modernity.

One of the highest rated restaurants in town was right in the hotel, so we decided to try it out.  Bistro 1202 is one of several restaurants owned by the same family that runs the hotel.  We were pretty hungry by the time we sat down, and we got generous portions of decent food that I wouldn’t characterize as “fine dining” (which was how the hotel advertised itself); I’d call it solid restaurant fare. With an expectation of from-scratch-fine-dining, our orders of onion rings, pork buns and duck breast were a disappointment.  But looking at things objectively and with an expectation of a casual restaurant in rural Pennsylvania, the food was fine.  Unfortunately, our waitress was so inattentive and rude (perhaps we’d done something to annoy her) that it actually made the meal uncomfortable.  She was so anxious to have us out that she brought the completed check to us without asking if we wanted dessert (which we did) so we had her reopen the tab.

The next morning we decided to try to find a breakfast place favored by locals, and hit the jackpot with Jennz Café.  We really enjoyed our breakfasts surrounded by friendly service and lots of locals who all knew each other and the restaurant staff.  I had eggs on gluten free toast, and Dad finally had that stack of pancakes that connected him to his Catskill traditions!

Camp Equinuk

Our final stop was Camp Equinunk. Dad went for one summer with his brother Charles, and three summers with his cousin Richie when he was about 9-11 years old.  That put his time there at 1945-1947, a solid 70 years prior.  Dad remembered a good deal and told me all about it on the drive out and, not unlike the Alpine, Dad is still able to sing the camp song end-to-end.

Dad did not consider himself a great athlete: he was overweight as a child and recalled being the kid always picked last.  At Equinunk though, Dad enjoyed some success in swimming.  The camp still has a large lake where Dad was able to compete in swimming during color war.  Color war was the red team against the grey team: since those were - at still are - the colors of the camp logo.  

The lake at Camp Equinunk.  Source: Glide Magazine

He recalled there was a girls camp nearby, and that on weekend nights the camps would organize socials to let the boys and girls socialize.  Camp Blue Ridge still exists as an adjacent girls camp, sharing the lake and some other facilities.

We found an open gate and drove through the camp.  At first, Dad felt it was unrecognizable: new athletic facilities, new living quarters, modern fields and additional buildings obscured any semblance of the old camp.  But a few buildings stood out: probably the same structures he’d slept in for three summers as a child.

Dad at Camp Equinunk

Reflections

There was a real sense of nostalgia in the Catskills and rural Pennsylvania.  I couldn’t tell if we’d brought it with us because of our mission, or if it was naturally embedded into the landscape we’d been exploring.  Either way, the superhighway we drove on as we returned home, passing shiny newly-built malls, Starbucks, Target, and a half-built new Tappan Zee Bridge, provided a jarring jolt back into the present.

I’m so grateful for the time to get to know Dad a little better. Immersing ourselves in the past, however buried that past is, was a wonderful backdrop to encourage us not only to share some previous history, but to create some new history together.