The Borscht Belt Museum

90 Canal Street

Ellenville, NY 12428

https://www.borschtbeltmuseum.org/history

https://www.facebook.com/borschtbeltmuseum/

Open: Sunday 12:00pm-5:00pm/Monday-Wednesday Closed/Thursday-Saturday 12:00pm-5:00pm

Admission: Free but donations are being accepted

My review on TripAdvisor:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g47676-d26587886-r914784651-Catskills_Borscht_Belt_Museum-Ellenville_Catskill_Region_New_York.html?m=19905

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.