ELLENVILLE – An old bank building at the corner of Canal and Main streets in the Village of Ellenville is going to revive the iconic Borscht Belt era of the Catskills with a museum.
That was a time from the 1950s to early 1980s when thousands of Jews would travel up to “the country” to stay at one of the dozens of hotels for a vacation, a holiday or just a weekend.
The Golden Age of entertainment in Sullivan and Ulster counties will be forever memorialized in the museum, noted Elliot Auerbach, the deputy state comptroller, an Ellenville resident and former village manager.
“The story to be told here is greater than one town, one hotel, one bungalow colony, or one bowl of borscht. It’s about an era that changed lives, changed communities, changed the country,” he said. “It had its own lexicon of words – schmear, schmuck, schmegeggy.”
The hotels hosted the big names of the era in entertainment, sports and even Lyndon B. Johnson, as the Kutchers’ granddaughter, Jennifer Kutscher Rosen reflected.
“My personal favorites – Alan King, Joan Rivers, Freddy Roman, Ben Vereen and the Four Tops. And there were the visiting athletes, some stopping by for the annual memorial basketball game or Wilt Chamberlain, just checking in on his mom and pop, my grandparents,” she said.
Vacationing in Florida gradually wooed the visiting population away from the Catskills making the Borscht Belt era just a fond memory.
