I visited the Wawarsing Historical Society and Knife Museum on a whim the other week when I was visiting museums in the region. What I found was a very interesting local museum dedicated to history and marketing of the former Knife industry of the region. I had never realized that this was the major industry of the region.
The Mission Statement of the Museum:
Our mission is to develop a museum to serve as both a repository of artifacts and informational conservatory as well as a place where memorabilia and examples may be accessed so that this rich heritage and a viable segment of American History will not be lost.
Den of Marbletown-The Teddy Bear Museum at One Basten Lane
The sign that greets you in the front of the business.
When you enter the museum, you will walk through an extensive collection of Steiff animals for sale in the museum gift shop. The owner of the museum and gift shop is a licensed Steiff store. After you pass the gift shop you get to experience all the beautiful stuffed toys which I would consider art.
The Steiff Teddy Bear Shop that sells all these beautiful works of art.
All the beautiful Steiff animals for sale in the Steiff Store.
The tour of the museum starts at the register where the museum has a small drink menu. You can get soft drinks like soda, homemade Lemonade and Bubble Tea or hot drinks like Coffee or Tea before or after your tour. A more extensive menu is being worked on the owner of the museum promised.
The drink menu at the Teddy Bear Museum.
Then you move room to room admiring all the beautiful graceful animals. The rooms are filled with all sorts of bears of all shapes, sizes and colors. There is every animal that was on Noah’s Arc and probably more. You can admire the bears from a distance but get to see them up close in the gift shop that offers such an extensive collection to choose from.
The extensive collection of wooden toys on the way up the stairs.
You can see an original “Teddy Bear” like the one created for Theodore Roosevelt. You can see a collectible “Rod Bear” one of the original bears created by the company.
The “Teddy Bear” in the collection.
On the second floor, the collection continues with an extensive collection of wooden toys. They also come in every shape and color. There is also an extensive set of collectables as well.
The Wooden Animals in the collection.
The museum creator’s mother in law continues to collect bears and other animals today so the collection keeps growing. There is an extensive amount of ‘collectable’ items on display as well.
Some of the smaller ‘collectables’.
More ‘collectables’.
The owner of the museum also has a special section for his friend, Sandy Sherman with a portrait of her as a girl with her Steiff toy and then a picture of her as an adult with the same toy years later. It was a very touching piece in the collection.
The Sandy Sherman exhibition
The portrait of Sandy Sherman and the photo of her holding the same bear as in the painting.
When you have had enough of everything stuffed animals, there is a place for parents to relax while their kids play with some toys provided by the museum in the “Mama Bear” room. The lounge is for parents to relax and kids to continue to play.
The Mama Bear Lounge
The “Mama Bear” Lounge is a place of comfort and relaxation. It is set up perfectly for those who want o play and for those who want to relax.
The Children’s Room in the ‘Mama Bear’ Lounge
The entrance to the gardens and the pond.
The path with the gardens.
The pond at the end of the path.
When you finish exploring the inside of the museum, the grounds outside offer much more as well. There is lush green lawns to relax on and a path with a garden to a pond in the woods that is just as relaxing. it is a nice way to spend the day exploring the paths and relaxing under the trees.
The beautiful grounds outside the museum.
The museum is a perfect way to capture the inner child in each of us and a place to relax and just enjoy a nice day. The museum owner also added he is working on a new café menu so there will be a place to eat as well at the museum. Then you can really spend the day there.
It was a wonderful afternoon tour.
The History of the Museum:
(from the museum’s website)
The Den of Marbletown is a teddy bear museum in Kingston, New York. We have a large collection of original Steiff teddy bears on display, and we sell rare Steiff collectibles in our gift shop. We also feature an on-site café, where you can enjoy scratch-made food and homemade baked goods.
The sign that greets you in the front of the museum.
The Teddy Bear Museum features more than 5,000 Steiff teddy bears and animals, Madame Alexander dolls, Barbie dolls, and hand-carved wooden toys. Steiff is the German company that invented the Teddy Bear, as we know it, more than 100 years ago. Today Steiff is considered the world’s premier manufacturer of high-end toys and collectibles. Indeed, Steiff is the only “luxury” toy brand in the marketplace today.
The Grace Bear Collection Room
The Collection
The Teddy Bear Collection
The core of the collection comes from “Gracebear,” a Steiff enthusiast who continues collecting to this day. Gracebear has shared this collection with her daughter and son-in-law, Nan and Steve, who are the founders of The Den. Gracebear’s other collections rotate throughout the museum as temporary exhibits, including Madame Alexander dolls, Barbie dolls, Schuco toys and bears, and hand-carved wooden toys.
Dioramas
The Steiff Circus exhibit
Local artists share their talents through the creation of charming dioramas that rotate throughout the year.
The Steiff History Room
The “Teddy Bear” exhibit
The history of the Teddy Bear (and Teddy Roosevelt); the poignant story Margarete Steiff, the founder of the luxury toy company; and the design evolution of the Teddy Bear are some of the displays featured in this section of the museum.
The Rod Bear
The “Original Rod Bear”
On Loan from the collection of the late Mary Couke is the exquisite and rare 1904 Rod Bear, considered by many as “The Holy Grail” of Steiff Collectors. This bear features an early design attempt at movable joints through three metal rods in the body – horizontal ones for legs and arms, and a vertical one for the head.
The Teddy Bear Café:
The Teddy Bear Café
After you spend the day in our teddy bear museum, stop by our café for a quick pick-me-up. The Den of Marbletown serves a variety of menu items at our coffee shop in Kingston, Ulster County, Hudson Valley, NY.. You can create your dream drink, including flavored lemonade or 40 plus flavors of bubble tea at the den. Need to get some work done? Take advantage of our free Wi-Fi. Need a place for your kids to unwind? We have indoor and outdoor play spaces.
The drink menu is extensive and the beverages are homemade.
The Teddy Bear Gift Shop:
The gift shop offers everything Steiff
When you step into The Den of Marbletown’s souvenir shop in Kingston, Ulster County, Hudson Valley, NY, it’s like stepping back in time. Experience the joys of a classic toy shop when you browse our selection of Steiff teddy bears and stuffed animals. We’re one of the few shops in the area that sells Steiff toys, and we sell a wide variety of rare collectibles.
The gift shop has an extensive collection of bears and other animals for sale.
The Basten House
The Basten Homestead houses the collection.
The museum exists in a very special space – a marvelous 1860 farmhouse, in which houses seven generations of “The Basten” family. The museum experience is enhanced by this context – the old wall paper, the slopping floors, the secret passage ways, the antique door knobs, the original shutters, and the stone wall of “the keeping room.”
The Catskill Borscht Belt Museum at 90 Canal Street.
The museum sign
This museum will be the talk of the Hospitality Industry. The Catskill Borscht Belt Museum is in its beginning stages with the building bought and the renovations going on. The museum has not opened fully to the public yet as it is still in development and will not open until 2025.
The temporary main gallery
The museum is opened now with a pop-up exhibition on the resorts of the Catskill region “Vacationland: Catskill Resort Culture 1900-1980” with the rise of these resorts that catered to the thriving Jewish, Italian, Irish and Black middle classes who were barred from the resorts of the WASP elite. These were all inclusive hotels that catered to families who would spend summers together until a new generation of travelers developed with air travel, air conditioning developed and assimilation of the population by the 1980’s.
The main gallery of the pop up exhibition.
The exhibition shows how the Depression era generation spent their hard earned dollars and created an enclave where they thrived and enjoyed themselves. It was the type of vacation that we only see today at all inclusive resorts like Sandals and Club Med and on cruise ships.
The Main Gallery pop up exhibition “Vacationland”
The era of travel with the family ended in the 1980’s with women going to work, different educational standards and more people going to college and the change in the work schedule. This on top of the blatant discrimination of that era being ‘smoothed over’ time. People had more options and it was obvious from the timeline that the younger generation wanted different vacations from their parents.
The food service at the hotels
This will be a very interesting museum when it is completed and opened. For now, we get a teaser of what is to come. I am looking forward to it.
History of the Borscht Belt and of the Museum:
(from the museum website)
Curatorial Mission
The Borscht Belt Museum will not solely focus on entertainment, glamour and design. Its curatorial mission will include weightier themes and narratives embodied by the era; the antisemitism that spurred the creation of a Jewish vacationland, the refuge the Catskills provided to African-Americans, Irish-Americans, L.G.B.T.Q. and other communities, and the forces of assimilation and tolerance that eventually helped fuel the grand resort era’s decline.
The Hotel Exhibit on the places of that era.
In addition to its permanent core exhibition, the museum will have space for temporary and visiting shows, ensuring the institution delivers fresh interest to audiences and remains culturally relevant over time. The Catskills continues to serve as a refuge for all – an ethos that will find voice in the museum’s curatorial mission.
A Home with History
Beginning with a pop-up exhibit in July 2023, the Borscht Belt Museum will make its home at 90 Canal Street, in Ellenville, N.Y. The museum building is a glorious Neo-Georgian gem built in 1928 for the Home National Bank. For more than a half century the bank helped nurture hundreds of local hoteliers and bungalow colony owners whose ambitions, grit and self-sacrifice defined the resort era.
The Borscht Belt Museum will illuminate and celebrate the golden age of the Catskills resort era, when millions of urban dwellers sought refuge in the mountains of upstate New York, leaving deep imprints on mainstream American culture, from stand-up comedy and comfort food to mid-century modern design and popular concepts of leisure.
The permanent museum will open in 2025. A pop-up exhibit, Vacationland! Catskills Resort Culture 1900-1980, will welcome visitors beginning in early July 2023 through the end of the summer.
The hotels of the “Vacationland” exhibition.
History of the Borscht Belt:
(from the museum website)
No Hebrews Entertained”
The Borscht Belt was born out of bigotry. At the turn of the 20th century, hotel advertisements in the region often used phrases like “No Hebrews Allowed” and “Gentiles Only” to keep out Jewish patrons. This 1902 advertisement from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle features The Nichols in Liberty, N.Y.
In a delicious twist of history, a Jewish family by the name of Grossinger would later purchase the hotel and absorb it into the sprawling and iconic resort complex that bore their name.
The Borscht Belt
The region came to be called the Jewish Alps, Solomon County or more often, simply The Mountains. But another expression, the Borscht Belt, so-named for the hearty beet soup born in Eastern Europe, has had more staying power. What began as a patchwork of Jewish-owned farms whose proprietors took in summertime boarders to make ends meet grew into a sprawling constellation of all-inclusive resorts, hotels and more modest bungalow colonies and kuchalayns – establishments with shared kitchens.
The larger, more successful establishments like Kutsher’s, The Concord and The Nevele had thousands of rooms, nightclubs, indoor pools and ski slopes – and in the case of Grossinger’s, its own airstrip and post office.
The Dress Code and pool standards of the era at the hotels.
End of the Resort Era
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, many of the hotels began to falter, and by the 1980s, all but a handful were gone. It’s hard to pinpoint a single factor in the resort era’s demise, but cheap airfares, air conditioning and an easing of the antisemitism that spurred the Borscht Belt’s creation all conspired against establishments that were barely profitable in the best of times. Assimilation also played a role. Younger Jews simply craved more “modern” forms of leisure that did not remind them of their immigrant parents and grandparents. As the flow of guests began to ebb, the cost of drawing top-notch entertainment, keeping lobbies up to date and guest rooms looking fresh became prohibitive.
Changing tastes
Today, most of the big hotels have been demolished or swallowed by nature. A few have found new life among the expanding communities of Hasidic Jews. But the legacy of the Borscht Belt era lives on in the all-you-can eat buffet of a Carnival Cruise, the barbed quip of a stand-up comic and the very notion of the American vacation.
The Catskills Borscht Belt Museum will preserve and honor that legacy so sit back, savor that plate of chopped liver and stay tuned for more about this quintessential American story.
The final scene from the movie “Dirty Dancing” based on that era.
The Ulster County Historical Society at 2683 Route 209
I visited the Ulster County Historical Society in Kingston, New York recently and found it to be a very interesting packed with information on both county and New York State history. The historical Bevier House was set up into different galleries.
In the main gallery which must have served as the family’s living room and parlor room was the “Leaving Bishop Falls” exhibit by artist Kate McGloughlin, who shared the story of how her family either sold out or were forced off their land when New York State used the area as a reservoir for drinking water for New York City. Her art told the story of her family’s love/hate relationship with the situation and how some of the family still deal with the incident. I thought it was interesting that she was a 12th Generation New Yorker.
The Main Gallery
What was once the Dining Room is now the Portrait Room, with many family portraits and of local citizens from the Museum’s collection. This room is also used for lectures.
The Portrait Gallery and lecture space
The Portrait Gallery
The Portrait Gallery has period pieces to them with various tables, armours and pottery and china pieces of the time period. The portraits reflect that time period as well.
The back part of the house is the period Dutch Kitchen which was remodeled from the more modern kitchen it had become over time as the family moved into modern times back to the original kitchen. The fireplace is filled with tea kettles, pots and pans that would have been used for cooking, a bedwarmer and various items that cooks and housewives would have used to make the family meals. There is even a bed in the kitchen which I took as something that was needed in the colder months.
The Dutch Kitchen
The pewter and pottery in the Dutch Kitchen.
A folding bed in the kitchen.
The room to the back displayed farm equipment and materials needed in the Blacksmithing and Blue Stoning industries that were once part of Ulster County. The farm equipment reflects the rural past of the farm land that used to surround the house. This is where the family made their money.
The farm tools display
The Farm tool display
The Blacksmithing Display
The Blue Stoning tools for mine blue stone for homes.
Then to the back of the house are the stone gardens loaded with all sorts of wild flowers and colorful flowering plants. This path leads to the old family barn that is now on private property. The gardens are a nice place to relax and unwind on a sunny afternoon.
The Stone Gardens in the summer months.
The side of the house with the stone gardens.
The gardens on the side of the house.
The home is an example of life on a farm at that time period and the family who put a lot of care in their home for generations. The care that the historical society has brought to this house is reflected in the displays and exhibits. The volunteers do a good job telling this story.
The Special Exhibition at the museum:
LEAVING BISHOP FALLS — AN ASHOKAN STORY MAY 13 – OCT 29, 2023
The entrance of the exhibition “Leaving Bishop Falls”
Construction of the Ashokan Reservoir, part of New York City’s water system, flooded communities long established in the Esopus Valley. That action reverberates in our community today.
Artist Kate McGloughlin shares her family’s history in the area.
The work of artist Kate McGloughlin, a 12th– generation county resident, captures the sense of loss her family still carries from the seizure of Bishop Falls. Her kin, and many like them, were forcibly removed from their land at Bishop Falls.
The artist’s descendants
Kate’s painting and printmaking tell the story of her people, acknowledging their loss and finding solace in the beauty of the Ashokan landscape.
The main gallery with her works.
The exhibition asks us to reflect on our own family stories and how they resonate in our lives today.
The works of Kate McGloughlin
Map of the location of the family land and community lands taken away.
The History of the Ulster County Historical Society:
(from the museum’s website)
The Ulster County Historical Society is the oldest historical society in New York State. It was established in 1859, largely through the efforts of State Senator George C. Pratt, Commanding Colonel of the 20th Regiment, New York State Militia (80th NYSV). Col. Pratt was mortally wounded 1862 at the Second Battle of Bull Run. With his death, the Society became dormant until 1898, when an enthusiastic group led by Judge G.V.D. Hasbrouck revived it.
The Bevier House plaque
Throughout the history of the UCHS, the mission has been twofold. The society’s primary responsibility has been to act as curator and collector of significant Hudson Valley artifacts, documents, and cultural items. The donation of the Bevier House as museum space helped the UCHS to achieve this goal, and we currently house several fine collections of artwork, furniture, and culturally significant documents. Additionally, our library within the museum allows for researchers to access documents, land records, maps, town histories, letters, and diaries of interest to this area of the Hudson Valley. Please contact info@ulstercountyhs.org with any research queries.
The Bevier Family tree and patent
The second goal of the UCHS is to educate our community and the public on the very important role that the Hudson Valley, and particularly Ulster County, has played in the formation of our great nation. Through a variety of programs centered around our current exhibits, we encourage participants to engage with and explore their local and personal histories.
A copy of the permit to maintain and run the local highway.
The rate of the tolls on the road that the family collected.
The History of the Van Leuven/Bevier Homestead:
(from the museum website)
The sign that welcomes you.
The Ulster County Historical Society is proud to have the Bevier House as its headquarters. The Bevier Family donated the building in 1935 to serve as a meeting space and to house the collections of local historical artifacts stewarded by the UCHS.
The Bevier House in the summer of 2023.
The home site was first settled in the 1680s and began as a one room structure, constructed by Andries Van Leuven. It may have reflected the Dutch tradition of positioning the gable end toward the street. In 1715, Louis Bevier of the New Paltz Patent purchased the property for his third son Louis and wife Maria Hasbrouck.
The family barn (which is not part of the Historical Society property)
The site remained in the Bevier Family for the next 223 years and provided a successful income from farming. The home grew and was improved with most changes occurring between 1840 and 1890, when much of the U.S. was experiencing rebuilding and reconstruction after many years of turmoil.
The stone garden on the side of the house.
The house gardens and well in the summer of 2023.
The final major change that occurred in the house was the Dutch kitchen remodel in the 1970s, in conjunction with the Bicentennial.
The Dutch kitchen brought back to its original form.
The Ulster County Historical Society is a perfect way to understanding Dutch farming life at that time period in Ulster County, NY.
Visiting a Museum: The Unique, Unusual, Obscure and Historical 