Going back just a few decades, almost all the kosher hotels were located in the Catskill Mountains
The Pioneer opened up in the early ’40s, and had originally been called Gartenberg and Schechter, after the two owners. In the ’50s, Leo Gartenberg took it over and renamed it the Pioneer Country Club. (It has a special place in my family’s heart, because that’s where my parents met.) The hotel was known for its high standard of kashrus as well as for the amount of tzedakah raised there, known as the Pioneer Milk Fund. Although the hotel had amazing food, what really made it stand out was the musical entertainment. There was a special auditorium called the Pioneer Playhouse that held close to a thousand people. In those days, anyone who wanted to make it in the Jewish music field had to start off at the Pioneer. During Pesach in the 1960s, stars like Shlomo Carlebach, Jo Amar, and the Rabbis’ Sons headed the lineup. The house band was the Messengers Orchestra, and every night of Chol Hamoed, Heshy Walfish on keyboard and Yehudah Isaacs on drums would perform in the lobby until 2 or 3 a.m.
The Lake House Hotel, which opened in 1953, was owned by the Katz family and located in Woodridge, NY. It was common knowledge that most of the hotel guests were repeat customers for years, and it was the place to go if you were bringing a large family along. The hotel prided itself on being family-oriented, and some of the extra-long tables for Pesach had as many as 30 to 40 family members. (The Lake House still exists as a chassidish summer resort for Sullivan County vacationers.)
The Pineview Hotel, which ran for 70 years, was owned by the Leibowitz family and located in South Fallsburg. The hotel was popular with many West Side families, its guest list including the Karasik family, the Bergmans, Rabbi Joe Kaminetzky, and Mr. Irving Bunim. While some hotels relied heavily on the entertainment, the Pineview was known for its focus on sports. There would be basketball tournaments all day long, as well as baseball and swimming. Many of the Pineview guests were Holocaust survivors, and that was a common topic of discussion among the older crowd. In the 1970s, Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis was one of the popular lecturers, her well-attended outdoor women’s shiur called “Lecture On the Lawn.” When Mr. Bunim would give his Pirkei Avos shiur, it was called “Perek On the Lawn.”
Owned by the Zucker Family, this hotel opened in the 1950s and was the summer home of many gedolim. Rav Aharon Kotler, Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Avigdor Miller, and Rav Eliezer Silver were just a few of the illustrious guests who enjoyed the rowboats on the lake on the premises. A couple of years after Zucker’s closed down, one of their sons, Leo, opened up the La Vista Hotel nearby in South Fallsburg. (Who can forget Jerry Markowitz’s famous jingle, “La-La Vista… Country Hotel”?
Create a free account to keep reading.
