Advertising The Catskills
The Natural Enchantment
By Karin Edmondson
Mention the Catskill Mountains to a city person and more than likely
he or she will conjure up images of vast green forests, preserves of wilderness
seemingly untouched by modern society, pristine lakes, small farms, serene
villages, fresh air and space gloriously free of traffic jams, pollution
and all the assorted intrusive noises that accompany life in the city. People
flock to this picturesque region seeking escape and relief from the oppressiveness
that can encroach upon life in a big city. One might
remember the hit movie from the 80’s, Dirty Dancing, starring heartthrob
Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. The setting of their love story was an
elegant resort, fictitiously named Kellerman’s, in the Catskill Mountians.
The resort in the movie (actually shot on location in North Carolina)—self-contained
and offering tennis, swimming, horseback riding and those famous dancing
lessons—was based on actual resorts that proliferated in the region during
the turn of the century and the early 1900s. Not surprisingly, our ancestors—those
people who lived in the very same city some of us live in today—had the exact
same idea: get the heck out of New York for a little bit of spiritual and
physical rejuvenation!
The Catskill Mountain region was originally settled
by the Dutch in the 1700’s but until the painters of The Hudson River School
arrived on the scene in the early 1880’s and captured on canvas and with
pigment the great beauty and inherent romanticism of the region, only the
few hardy townspeople knew of many charms of the region. The paintings of
Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand and others of the Hudson River School were undoubtedly
a most successful advertising for the region, highlighting both the majestic
landscape and the sublime natural beauty of the Catskill Mountains. Not surprisingly,
interest in the area increased and boarding houses—literally private homes
whose owners took in guests for a period of time—sprang up in various mountaintop
locations, primarily in the townships of Hunter, Cairo, Catskill and Windham.
A great proliferation of these boarding houses happened in the years following
the Civil War due to a middle class that was growing and seeking ways to
spend summer weeks and months outside of the city.1 As New York City evolved
into a pulsing metropolis, quality of life gradually took a turn for the
worse—overcrowding, crime, pollution, disease—problems not so dissimilar
to the ones city dwellers deal with today, folks started looking northward
to the unspoiled landscapes of the Catskill Mountains. One of those folks
included the boxer Benny Leonard, who picked Tannersville to train in earnest
for a fight with Mickey Walker scheduled at Yankee Stadium on August 20,
1921. As the local newspaper, The Tannersville Times-Record (July 29, 1921)
noted: “It is just 121 miles from the first step of his Catskill training
ring to the gang plank of the squared circle of the Yankee ball park.” Coinciding
with this newfound interest in summering in more natural settings was the
expansion of various railroads. In 1882 Hunter received rail service for
the first time and suddenly Hunter residents had a flourishing summer industry—taking
care of these boarders whether it meant housing them, feeding them or even
stage acting in various boarding houses.2 Word spread in the city, as friends
would share information on preferred lodgings and travel guidebooks began
featuring these boarding houses.
According to Justine Hommel, president of the Mountain
Top Historical Society in Haines Falls, NY, architecturally, the early boarding
houses were plain—commonly square and nondescript. Most of these boarding
houses would have a recreation room as well. Like modern urbanites of today,
the summer boarders were keenly interested in outdoor activities including,
hiking, fishing, sightseeing and hunting.3 A great many of these boarding
houses soon expanded bit by bit, a wing at a time, into the grand hotels
and resorts that signified the glory days of the Catskill summer region. As
the grand hotels gained in popularity and were able to accommodate many more
people, the smaller boarding houses, unable to keep up, were abandoned or
fell into disrepair. In the 1940’s however, these houses could be rented cheaply
for the summer season by several families. The buildings would then close
on Labor Day when there was a mass exodus to the city in time for the fall
school season.
The first of these behemoths, the Catskill Mountain
House was initially built in 1824 as a rustic sort of camp with men on one
side and women on the other. It was then gradually expanded upon, wing by
wing, to its final capacity for three hundred and fifty people. Presidents,
visiting dignitaries, nature lovers, families of the elite—all of them made
the Catskill Mountain House their holiday destination. The prosperity of
the Catskill Mountain House beckoned entrepreneurs who wanted to emulate its
success and the “old-fashioned” appeal of the Catskill Mountain House soon
gave way to a lavish new hotel—the Hotel Kaaterskill that prominently featured
modern amenities such as plumbing and heating. When the original owner of
the Catskill Mountain House passed it on to his sons, they immediately added
electricity and modern flush toilets, built a tennis court and a golf course
and included smaller tables and changeable menus in the dining room.4 The
Depression, however, followed by the two world wars effectively put an end
to the lavish and carefree summer vacations most people had hitherto enjoyed.
The house was not built upon a foundation and because of its precipitous location
on a rocky ledge, by 1950 it was very much run down and in disrepair. The
owner at that time was an idealist who could not afford to keep up even the
most basics of repair. Eventually, vandals took their toll until finally,
it was sold to the state and crumbling shell of the once-grand house had to
be razed. Justine Hommel recounts that Perry Como once had a little known
stint as a barber at the Catskill Mountain House—obviously, well before the
world knew him as Perry Como, crooner extraordinaire.
The Fairmont Casino and Hotel was a perfect example
of how a simple boarding house grew into a rustically dazzling 
tourist destination. The Fairmont originally started life as a boarding
house. As more and more city folk flocked to the region, the owners expanded
one part at a time—adding distinction to the building via the addition of
turrets, a shingle roof and vibrant splashes of color. Large porches were
added and soon became gossip centers for ladies as well as men. (A feature
that was commonplace for the majority of these grand resorts was the focus
on large sweeping porches as centers of socializing and gossip.) Tennis courts
were soon built and eventually even a swimming pool sprang up on the other
side of the road—opposite the Fairmont main building.
The usual length of stay for families or couples was
one month or more and one interesting outgrowth of these resorts was the
popularity of a train known as “The Husbands’ Train.” This train would transport
the menfolk—the assorted husbands and suitors—from the city on Friday evenings
to the resort for the weekends and then back to the city again on Monday
mornings for another week of work in the humid, hot city. The women and children
would languish in the country, relaxing, gossiping and enlivening the daily
routines with petty arguments over dinner table reservations in the dining
room. Dinner was a special occasion for which people, men and women alike,
donned their evening finery in an effort to outshine one another. Most resorts
had a huge ballroom where dances were held once a week. In this era before
the onslaught of television, entertainment in the evenings consisted of lectures,
charades, skits, plays, bands and guest entertainers. In the 1920’s, each
resort had an in-house band. Later, in the 1950’s, some of the resorts even
hired cars to drive around with loudspeakers advertising the various performers
of the evening. Most times, in order to attend the dances or concerts, one
had to be a guest at the resort; in some cases, however, and as the resorts
slowly declined in popularity, just about anyone could go there for a table
charge.
Around the same time that Hunter first enjoyed railroad
service, Tannersville received its own as well, and a community of upper
middle class people began building luxurious summer cottages in the immediate
area. Onteora Park was the first of this sort of community: its members sought
privacy and an escape from the formal and crowded atmosphere of the grand
hotels yet desired the comfort of neighbors of a similar cultural and social
ilk. The founders of the park were Candace Wheeler and her brother, Frances
Thurber. A key figure in the decorative arts movement of the late nineteenth
century, Candace was the young country’s first important female textile designer.
She partnered with Louis Comfort Tiffany briefly before becoming CEO of her
own firm, Associated Artists (later tackling interior decoration projects,
one of them being Mark Twain’s house in Connecticut). She made it a point
to promote the careers of young female artists who worked for and with her.
Perhaps it was Candace who set the tone for attracting a varied gathering
of woman luminaries to the colony? Needless to say the area, specifically
Onteora Park, attracted Maude Adams, one of America’s first theatre stars,
who was so taken with the area that she built herself a summer cottage and
eventually came to live full-time in Tannersville until her death in 1953.
Mark Twain might be the most famous gentleman author to have rented a summer
cottage in the park but several illustrious women authors called Onteora their
home as well. Mary Mapes Dodge married an attorney and then a few years later
finding herself widowed, turned to penning children’s stories (the most famous
of her books is Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates) to keep her independence.
Elizabeth Custer, wife of the famous General George Armstrong Custer, traveled
whenever possible with her husband throughout the Wild West until she was
widowed after the battle of Little Big Horn. She started writing about her
experiences on the plains in order to supplement the meager army pension
she received after her husband’s death. Lastly, Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson,
the first wife of Ernest Seton Thompson (one of the founders of the Boys
Scouts of America) authored A Woman Tenderfoot in which chronicled her four
month tour of the West with her husband and offered advise to other gentlewomen
on what to bring along for a hunting trip…a silver knife, fork and spoon
and Japanese napkins are just some of the “requirements.” Onteora Park celebrated
its one hundredth anniversary in 1987.
Another park that sprung up in the area was Elka Park,
with an original clubhouse designed by Hugo Kafka in approximately 1889,
and built for the sum of twenty five thousand dollars. (The original clubhouse
burned down in 1949 and there is another, more modern one in its place today.)
It was originally a clubhouse for the elite German social organization, The
Liederkranz Club. Each year it was leased to a manager who would then staff
the clubhouse and invite assorted members to the club. Elka Park, like the
others, was comprised of private homes primarily grand Victorian in design.
A distinctive feature of Elka Park was separate quarters and social activities
for men and women.
Unlike Twilight Park (another residential park in the
area), Elka Park and Onteora Park, all of which are very much inhabited and
thriving today, Sunset Park failed even despite its rather modern distinguishing
feature of fresh spring water supplied from mountain reservoirs and underground
springs. Sunset Park also did not actually have a clubhouse, but rather a
hotel on the grounds of the park, aptly named the Sunset Inn. Those who booked
rooms there enjoyed the same privileges of the members for the duration of
their stay. Needless to say, staying at Sunset Inn was rather pricy. Visitors
could even purchase half gallons from Sunset Springs to take home…and so
began New Yorkers’ addiction to mountain spring water!
Sadly, a great many of these grand resorts and boarding
houses have fallen into horrendous disrepair or have vanished entirely. A
handful do remain standing but are not in use and among these vacant behemoths
are The Cold Spring in Tannersville and The Grand View in Hunter. There is
one boarding house from that golden era that is still thriving to this day;
those familiar to the area will recognize The Thompson House in Windham (open
for business and under the same management for a century). Then there is
The Eggery, originally a boarding house run by an entrepreneurial Viennese
woman whose superb Viennese cuisine was renowned in its time throughout the
region, now enjoying continued life as a bed and breakfast. The Villa Vosilla
in Tannersville, once called The Rose Garden, entertains its visitors with
such planned activities as bocce games and bingo and, in the evenings, dancing.
Up until recently The Sugar Maples in Maplecrest was forgotten and standing
empty. The resort, a series of small houses without kitchens built around
a larger house, was recently donated to the Catskill Mountain Foundation,
which plans to completely renovate and modernize the site for eventual use
as an arts campus complete with accommodations for residencies by performing
artists. Out of all of the grand dames of the sparkling Catskill resorts,
The Sugar Maples was in use as recently as the 1960’s and featured such low-key,
modern entertainment as a roller skating rink.
A structure from the glory days of this region that
remains wonderfully intact and is still in use during the summer months is
the All Souls Church outside of Onteora at the intersection of Routes 25
and 23C. The Church was probably completed in 1894 and first built as summer
cottages began to proliferate in the area. A community established itself
in Onteora Park and there suddenly was a need to move services that were
being conducted in private homes to a central place of worship. The church
is a gorgeous example of neo-Gothic architecture, using local fieldstones
and with such design elements as buttresses, a steep roof and stained glass
memorial windows. During the summer season, regular Sunday services are held
in the church and, not surprisingly, it is a most popular location for weddings.
This August, you can catch a glimpse of these famed
Catskill Mountain playgrounds at the FREE two day Open House the Mountain
Top Historical Society will host on August 23 and 24 in Haines Falls at the
crest of historic Route 23A
There will be an artists’ exhibition in the Barn Gallery
on the Mountain Top Historical Society’s property and in the Ulster &
Delaware Train Station (the MTHS’s current home) with photographs and artifacts
relating to this year’s theme of Advertising The Catskills. Along with
the historical exhibits, a host of activities and entertainment are planned:
performances by The Good Times Jazz Band, The Catskill Country Band and
The Sweet Adelines. Master lute player Carver Blanchard will perform, as
will the Schoharie Valley Cloggers. There will be various demonstrations:
how to make your very own maple syrup (for those of you with visions to be
the next Paul Newman!) and The Bruderhof will share the art of making floral
headbands. Vendors will include: period postcards, handmade jewelry, dolls,
pottery and gift baskets. Famed local photographer Francis Driscoll (whose
evocative images of the region oft appear in the Guide) will have an exhibit
of his work and photographs for sale. Also on display will be a series of
Orville Slutzky’s prints of the village of Hunter at the turn of the century.
An original painting of the Catskill Mountain House by local artist Patti
Ferarro will be raffled off as well.
So, stop on by and chat with Justine Hommel who is
a veritable walking encyclopedia of information on the history of these
long gone days of yore. Brew some maple syrup. Weave a floral headband.
Tap your heels to some country music and oh yeah, spend some time perusing
vintage memorabilia and historic prints and paintings from private collections
that probably won’t appear in public again for quite some time. Come by
and do all of this in the fresh mountain top air! The two-day event is made
possible partly though the generosity of The Bank of Greene County and the
Town of Hunter.
Endnotes:
(1), (2) ,(3), (4): Horne, Field. The Green County Catskills, A History
by Field Horne. Hensonville: Black Dome Press, 1994.
This article is the property of the Catskill
Mountain Foundation and is used here by permission.
