FERNDALE, ny

Ben and Rachel Golant and her mother and stepfather Ida and Nathan Smith bought the property on Upper Ferndale Road from the Balsam family in 1921 and turned it into what became the Upper Ferndale Country Club. After Nathan and Ida passed, their sons Abe and Bob, along with their wives Mabel and Yetta, ran the hotel with Ben and Rachel until it was sold in 1957.
 

Ben Golant had been the owner of a bar in New York City in what is now East Harlem but was then a neighborhood for Russian Jews. When Prohibition was enacted in 1920, his bar turned into a speakeasy, and life for his family became dangerous. A skilled carpenter, having learned to work with his hands growing up in Babruysk in Belarus, Ben had been working with the Workmen’s Circle to build a tuberculosis hospital in Liberty for Jewish patients, since the existing sanitorium in Loomis did not allow Jews. Jennie Grossinger had purchased property in Ferndale in 1913, renting rooms to Jewish visitors, and in 1919, she purchased a larger property on a hilltop and called it "Grossinger's Terrace Hill House." Two years later, Ben Golant and Ida and Nathan Smith secured a loan and purchased the Balsam property across the valley opposite Jennie's hill.
 

The Golant and Smith families opened the Upper Ferndale Manor as a small hotel and soon changed the name to “The Upper Ferndale Country Club” despite the fact that the “country club” didn't have a golf course. No one seemed to be bothered—probably because none of their guests had yet learned to play golf. Some came just for a week or a weekend, some came for a month or the whole summer. The husbands would arrive on Friday night and depart Sunday night or Monday morning, while the women and children stayed and played all week. The children had a day camp, and the women played canasta and mahjong. Despite the hardships of the Great Depression, some years the Upper Ferndale was open all year round, but during World War Two, it was open only for the summer.
 

Ben's wife Rae and her mother Ida did all the cooking--Eastern European Jewish favorites with little French flourishes that Rae was learning from cookbooks. As the hotel grew, Bob's wife Yetta ran the pantry, and Abe's wife Mabel ran the front desk. Ben's carpentry skills enabled him to add many outbuildings to the property. He created tennis courts and built a pool on the shore of the lake, so that the children would be protected while swimming. He also built a playhouse, and according to family legends, the hotel hired entertainers like Sam Levenson, Mickey Katz, and Dick Shawn, emceed by Social Director Vic Settle, with dance lessons from Killer Joe and the Lovely Donna. One night on the Johnny Carson Show, actor Tony Randall was asked about the worst job he ever had. He groaned and said it was at a hotel in the Catskills where the owner built housing for the entertainers on a platform under the water tower. "The water tower leaked!" Tony Randall complained, but everyone watching from the Golant and Smith families beamed. The Upper Ferndale had been mentioned on Johnny Carson!
 

It was never as large as Grossinger's, it was never as fancy as the Concord, and it never had the sports facilities of Kutsher's, but for the middle-class Jews who traveled up from the city, the Upper Ferndale Country Club was everything they needed for a perfect getaway.
 

In the mid 1950s, Rae Golant had a stroke, and it became too difficult for the two families to continue. In 1957, the Upper Ferndale was sold to Camp Agudah, and it is still owned by them today. The Golants and Smiths remained on Upper Ferndale Road, the Smiths moving into an old 1800s farmhouse and the Golants into a house Ben built on the property.