LIVINGSTON MANOR

• Paula Kay, Assemblywoman, Introductory Remarks  
• Marisa Scheinfeld, Marker Project 
• Isaac Jeffreys, Marker Project & Unveil Marker  
• Judy Siegel, Granddaughter of Alex and Szerena Wittenberg who founded the Edgewood Inn and daughter of Evelyn and Fred Haas who ran the hotel until it closed in the mid 1980s 
• Dennis Hawkins, grandson of John Weiner, White Roe 
• David Menges, Son of Della and Harold Menges, Menges Lakside. David and his brother Tom were the fourth generation in the family that founded Menges’ Lakeside. 
• Sarah Halpern - a 4th generation Livingston Manor resident whose great grandfather Max, opened Sorkin's Department store in the early 1900s. The Sorkin's were the second Jewish family to settle in Livingston Manor & Max was one of the founders of Agudas Achim. 

The property that ultimately became Menges' Lakeside was purchased by Lizzie (Elizabeth) Fries from Elisabeth Schloemer on December 2nd 1889.  The original purchase for $1100.00 included all of the hotel's property on the West side of Shandelee Road to the middle of Sand Pond as well as additional land on the East side of the road for a total of 197.4 acres (copy of the deed in documents).  Elizabeth and her husband John, promptly opened up a boarding house called "The Chestnut Grove House" and started what became the hotel.  The original hotel was just 32' x 28', but was quickly expanded as there was a demand for clean country air and great food all on a lakefront setting.  

In 1921, she sold the hotel to her daughter Anna and her husband Albert Menges.  The northern portion of the lakefront property had previously been sold to her son Fred.  Fred also went into the hotel business by expanding his home to three stories and adding extra cottages.  He named his hotel "The Waverly" after his wife.  The Waverly became the friendly family competition for decades to follow.  

Al and Ann quickly expanded the hotel to four stories with 26 rooms and built its iconic boathouse.  The chestnut blight and demise of all the chestnut trees forced a name change with the property becoming known as "The Lakeside House" in the 1920's.  Al Menges build his full time residence in Youngsville around 1933 and used it as the wintertime Lakeside House.  He had six bedrooms, a dining room, a large living room, a music room, kitchen and all of two bathrooms, yet he hosted as many as 30+ people.  His Youngsville home was in a valley at a much lower elevation than the Shandelee hotel and consequently enjoyed a more tolerable winter.   Ann and Al were joined in the business by their son Harold.  His full name was Harold Albert Menges and based on his initials, he was quickly given the nickname of Ham or Hammy. Harold graduated from Pratt Institute with a degree in hospitality but had his stint at the hotel disrupted by WWII.  He served as a cook in the Army and was featured in a Stars and Stripes article about the cook named Ham.  One of his cousins-in-laws, George, was in the Air Force and routinely flew from North Africa to France where Ham was stationed just to enjoy his good cooking! Harold returned safely from the war and married Della Judson, the younger sister of his cousin Albert Heinrichs' wife in 1949.

Harold and Della took over the operation of the hotel in 1950.  Things did not get off to a promising start as they only had eight guests for their opening Memorial Day (known back then as Decoration Day) weekend.  1950 was also noteworthy for the mid-summer arrival of their first child, Thomas (known today as Tom, but as Tommy to everyone in the 50's).  Harold and Della worked hard to plow everything back into the business and drove to Florida every winter with their trailer until 1955 for wintertime employment in restaurants.  Their efforts of putting money back into the business paid off as buildings were modified or built to accommodate a growing clientèle.  The main building had many bedrooms, but it only had sink in the rooms and shared bathrooms in the halls.  The modified Cottage (it looked like it could have been a barn) had two rooms per floor with sink in room, but sharing a bath with only one other room (semi-private).  In 1954 with help from his cousin Albert, they built the Annex which had eight rooms with private baths.  In 1955, they built the White House which had four rooms with private bath, two semi-private rooms and served as their winter residence.  A two car garage building with two rooms overhead with private baths was added a year or two later.  A couple of one-room cottages were renovated into suitable guest accommodations in the early 60's.  

In 1966, Harold and Della took on an ambitious project of building the eight unit Motel building which offered luxury accommodation and a lakefront view.  It is worth noting that even in the most expensive rooms, there were no telephones or televisions.  The hotel only had two phone lines and for many years, they were party lines.  Waitresses were expected to know all of the guests they served and find them on the hotel grounds if they received a phone call.  Guests quickly learned to have family or friends call them during meal hours.  There were only two television sets on the hotel grounds, one in each of the front lobbies.  The decision of what to watch was generally decided by vote.  However, when Masterpiece Theater was on, it was the automatic choice in both TV areas.  As the number of guest rooms grew, so did the dining room and kitchen.  The dining room expanded on the north side of the building to incorporate what had been a long side porch and on the south side of the building to incorporate what had been an enclosed porch.  The hotel's property also expanded in the 60's to include what had been the Shandelee Grange Hall building.  When the Hillcrest bar burned down, taking the Grange Hall with it, Harold and Della purchased that property and eventually turned the combined lot into an overflow parking lot.

In the early 60's the hotel went thru another name change. Another family in Livingston Manor built a 6-unit motel in front of a 100' x 200' body of water and called themselves "The Lakeside Motel".  Reservations, mail and money all seemed confused by the new arrival.  Harold and Della decided to incorporate the business as Menges' Lakeside to avoid any future problems.  They hired the local school's art teacher to help them come up with a design and logo.  The Menges' Lakeside signage and stationary was designed to highlight the boathouse with the printing of the hotel's name and address to be reminiscent of the style of growing grass. 

Tragedy struck in 1967 when Harold died of a rare neurological disorder contracted during the war.  His Air Force cousin George died of the same disorder several years later.  Della was left with three sons, Tom 17, Steven 12 and David 2 and a business to run entirely by herself.  Della had previously handled the front end of the business: reservations, employees, payroll, marketing and all financials.  Harold had managed everything dealing with the food and kitchen.  Della spent the next 3 or 4 weekends auditioning chefs until she found Katie, a Jewish-Hungarian concentration camp survivor who fit the bill.  Katie brought in some additional flavor elements into the hotel's cuisine and helped further raise its profile.  The hotel was undoubtedly unique in that it was an entirely female-run kitchen with a female chef, Katie, a female 1st and 2nd cook, Lynnie and Virginia as well as a female baker, Maria.  The only drawback to the mix was the one day that they got into a screaming fight with each other with multiple doors of the kitchen slamming almost simultaneously as they each stormed out of the kitchen.  Our guests lovingly referenced the hotel as "a Little bit of Switzerland in the Catskills", which was not far off the mark as the area is often referred to as the "Jewish Alps".  As the reputation of the hotel continued to grow, additional rooms were needed to accommodate those who could not fit into the available rooms.  An arrangement was made with Fred and Wavie Fries to book Menges' guests into the Waverly's rooms as the Waverly had stopped serving meals.  Two additional rooms were also booked at the Beiman's who owned a house across the street, next to the overflow parking lot. Eventually, Della purchased the Waverly.  This purchase rejoined the two parcels that had been separated prior to WWI when Elizabeth sold off the northern portion of the property to her son Fred.  Della later purchased the Beiman house.  Della never remarried but she did partner with Victor Vispetto.  Victor was very helpful in renovating the boardinghouse-style Waverly rooms into attractive rooms with private baths.  

Tom graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1976 and brought a plethora of new culinary ideas and techniques into the business with him.  In 1977, the hotel was visited by a writer for New York Magazine who was enchanted by the boathouse and loved everything that he ate. In the July 25th edition gave the hotel the strange moniker of having "Delicious Jewish-Presbyterian Cuisine".   Our guests had picked up on the same thought many years earlier and told their friends that Menges' was the "Best Jewish Hotel in the Catskills, run by non-Jews".  If you wonder what could produce such a strange combination, picture a Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) dinner so traditional that the local rabbi and his family attended.  The meal featured homemade gefilte fish, chicken soup with matzo balls that were as light as feathers along with all the appropriate fixings.  Offset that with a kitchen that served bacon every morning as a breakfast option and ham as an occasional main course.  Tom married Lynda Tutino in late 1978.  Their daughter Arielle arrived in March 1980.  The hotel discovered a niche market that was an excellent fit for what the hotel offered: folk dancing conventions.  Folk dancing could best be described as "Jewish Square Dancing".  Classes are given throughout the Greater NY area with teachers having their set of followers.  Della arranged with various teachers to have dance weekends at the hotel in May, June, September and October.  The teacher would promote the weekend to their classes and teach two sessions a day over the weekend.  The teacher would earn a per diem for each student that attended.  The hotel quickly gained the reputation as being THE best place for dancing because of the food and cleanliness and also because the dining room floor (where the dancing was held) was a wood floor built over a basement.  Most other hotels that tried dancing had floors built on slab, which left everyone feeling very tired after dancing.  The "spring" in our wood floors left everyone wanting more. The 70's and 80's were the "golden years" for the hotel with its occupancy rate consistently the highest of ALL of the hotels in the Catskills.  The dining room's comfortable capacity was slightly over 120, but there were numerous occasions of 140-150 people dining and one instance of 186 when the card room was turned into an overflow dining room.  There was little opportunity to do any catering, but the one time the hotel catered a 50th Anniversary party for a local couple, over 300 people attended over the 4-hour reception.  Everything seemed to point to continued success.
 

Nothing lasts forever.  The seeds of the downfall of the entire Sullivan County resort hotel industry had taken root in the last 50's and early 60's, but no one recognized it at the time.  The growing middle-class of Greater NY wanted more than what the traditional Catskill resort could offer and with the arrival of relatively cheap airfare, had the means to get it as destinations in Europe, the Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii became accessible and affordable.  Hotels and boarding houses large and small quietly disappeared.  Della and Tom had belonged to a small hotel owner's association of about eight properties reasonably similar in size.  In a remarkably short time, there were only four, then three, then just two left operating.  It was very distressing to hear from distributors that 70 room Menges' had a much higher guest count than the 800 room Grossinger's Hotel.  As the hotels were sold off to tax-exempt religious groups or abandoned, the squeeze was put on all of the secondary services such as the produce distributor, the wholesale butcher, the laundry, the dairy and others.  All of those businesses disappeared as well.  It also became increasingly difficult to find staff to work. Menges' hired waitresses, utility girls and boys almost exclusively from the two neighboring school district of Livingston Manor and Jeffersonville-Youngsville.  In the Sixties and Seventies there were as many as six applicants per job opening as it was the premier location for parents to have their girls working.  The environment was safe, housing and three substantial meals per day were supplied and they had the potential to earn as much or more than what their parents earned in any given week.  There was no question that everyone worked hard, but they also had a good time.  By the mid-eighties, it was difficult to find one applicant per job opening.  Tom had left the hotel to teach culinary arts and management at Sullivan County Community College's Hospitality Department.  In the early spring of 1988, the family met to discuss the future of the business.  To continue its survival, the hotel would need to build a "convention-style" building that would be used for the folk dancers and potential catering.  The relative expense of the construction would be high for its potential return and would require Tom's full participation in the business.  Della's breast cancer had returned and her health was deteriorating.  

The family decided that it was time to sell.  The hotel opened for the 1988 season and went on the real estate market.  We were very fortunate to find a buyer.  Dr. Gorman loved the setting and how well kept everything seemed to be.  He purchased the property with the intent of making it into a psychiatric outpatient facility.  Della died on December 9th 1988.  The hotel sold to Dr. Gorman within 10 days of her death.  Within two months, Dr. Gorman changed his mind about opening up a facility and put the hotel back on the market.  It remained vacant with little to maintain it for the next 5 years.  He then sold it to the Koreans who had previously owned Lake Rest (the property immediately to the north of the hotel).  Unfortunately, neither Dr. Gorman nor the Koreans had recognized that the hotel had operated under fire codes that allowed it to operate without sprinkler systems and other updated codes as long as it was continuously operated.  Because of the time lapse in operations, very few of the rooms could be used as guest accommodations.  The minimal maintaince that Dr. Gorman provided became non-existent under the Koreans.  

After several years of struggling, the Korean group was were unable to pay their real estate taxes and lost the property to the town and county for unpaid taxes.  The property was sold at auction.  Over the winter of 2007, the new owner tore down all of the buildings that had been part of the Waverly.  The new owner tore down the majority of the Menges' buildings, but burned down the main building of the hotel in July of 2008.  The White House (now used as the caretaker's residence) and garage along with icehouse and the iconic boathouse are what remain of the hotel.   

 

  In the mid-late 1940s, Charles and Eva Kaplan of Brooklyn NY, my grandparents, purchased a 4-acre parcel of land on Old Route 17 in Livingston Manor, New York, nestled among “the Mountains”. For my immigrant grandparents, owning land was their American dream come true, something unimaginable where they had come from. My grandfather thought that this was the greatest country in the world, because anyone could own land.

On the property, there was an existing house where our family lived when we were “in the country.” Grandpa Charles, a master carpenter, designed and built all the bungalows himself, probably 18-20 units in all. Families, most or all from Brooklyn, most or all of them Jewish, rented the bungalows and spent the entire summer at Kaplan’s to escape the sweltering city. Wives and children stayed all summer, usually eight weeks, while the husbands commuted from the city at the weekends, by bus or by “hackey”—shared taxicab. Few had private automobiles. 

My grandparents, who also owned a candy store/luncheonette in Brooklyn, set up a small convenience shop in an annex to the “Big House,” where they sold sundries to the guests. They also took the guests’ orders for the milkman, who delivered dairy products to the bungalow colony a couple of times a week: milk, cream, buttermilk, sour cream, cottage cheese, farmer’s cheese, pot cheese, cream cheese, and more.  By the early 1950s, the job of taking the orders, then delivering to individual bungalows, collecting the money and gathering the empty glass milk bottles to return, was given to the Kaplans’ eldest grandchildren, me and my cousin Freeman Stein. We were very young, and we relished the grown-up responsibility, trust, and independence we were given by Grandma and Grandpa. Plus, it was just plain fun.

Behind the bungalows, a brook ran along the back of the property. Every summer, Grandpa would hire a bulldozer to dam up the brook and create a swimming hole, where we swam with inner tubes. The water was impossibly clear and breathtakingly cold. Getting in and out of the water was a clumsy affair, walking on the rocks piled up by the bulldozer. Often, Freeman and I would go “exploring” along the brook, following it far beyond Kaplan’s. I always imagined that if we went far enough, we’d get to Niagara Falls! And we’d hike up to covered railroad tracks and walk along them, feeling very adventurous and daring.

Grandpa also built a no-frills subterranean concrete “casino” for rainy day recreation: card games, ping pong, board games, and occasional movies. Outside, there were swings, where Freeman and I would stand and swing as high as we possibly could, singing the hit song, Perry Como’s “Oh My Papa,” at the top of our lungs. There was a handball court, a tetherball pole, and other playground equipment including seesaws and a roundabout.

I don’t recall that we ever had a television at Kaplan’s. For entertainment, I do remember a lot of jumping on beds as kids. And chasing around the grounds with Suzy, Grandma’s bilingual Border Collie, who understood English and Yiddish…but mostly responded to Yiddish! 

There were many outdoor birthday parties. And a lot of card-playing by the adults: pinochle for the men; canasta, casino and gin rummy for the women. Throughout the grounds were countless Adirondack chairs, all built by Grandpa. In my mind’s eye, I can still see him kneeling over a 2x4, sawing away, with a filterless Camels cigarette dangling from his lips, and a satisfied twinkle in his eye.

For telephone service, we had a party line and a 4-digit telephone number. The phone, located in the Big House, had no dial. To make a call, you simply picked up the handset and told the live Operator at the Livingston Manor exchange—which might have been in someone’s living room-- who you wanted to call. The phone was mostly used for emergencies and long-distance calls were very expensive. So for me, that phone is associated with traumatic events. Like when Freeman raced around a corner of the house and split his head open on a cement slop sink. Or when I got a killer sunburn playing all day in the parking lot in my bathing suit. In agony, I only wanted my mother, who was many hours away in Brooklyn. I did get to cry to her on the phone that time. 

And I remember a terrible, fatal collision between a bus and a van on our front lawn. The van was crushed and the bus was on its side. The police were called. Our aunt Trudy Kaplan hustled me and Freeman into the house, and put us to work washing dishes, to keep us away from the horrific scene. But not before we saw the driver of the van sitting on our lawn, rocking and moaning in shock: his passenger, a hitchhiker, had died in the crash.

Down the road from the bungalow colony, there was an air strip, Livingston Manor Airport, where you could take a short flight in a small prop plane, and get a bird’s-eye view of the glorious countryside. It was a great thrill to fly over Kaplan’s Bungalows, so low that you could wave to the people on the ground, and they’d wave back.

Getting to the Catskills from “the City” at that time was a much more daunting proposition than it is now. There was no New York Thruway. There were mostly two-lane roads that went through every town, few bypasses. The trip was at least twice as long as it is now. An important landmark and necessary stop along the way was the Red Apple Rest. One time when I was a toddler, we were all the way to the Red Apple Rest when my parents realized they’d forgotten to bring my potty seat. I absolutely would not “go” without it. We had to go all the way back to Brooklyn to get it!

Returning from “the country” to the City, the key landmark was “the Bridge” (the George Washington Bridge), and the soundtrack of most of the trip home was the kids’ refrain “Are we there yet?”  To pass the time, we would compete to see who could spot the most license plates from other states, and we would sing in the car. My dad had a lot of funny songs and ditties, and also sang 1940s novelty songs like “Mairzy Doats” and “Hut-Sut Rawlson on the Rillerah.” 

In the fall of 1957, my grandfather passed away at age 60. My grandmother could not continue running the bungalow colony by herself. At the time, her sons and son-in-law, my dad and uncles, were in partnership together building a thriving luncheonette business in the city, and they all had young families. They could not take on the bungalow colony. And so my grandmother decided to sell Kaplan’s Bungalows. 

I didn’t see the place again until 1992, when the extended family spent Thanksgiving in the Catskills. We visited the site of Kaplan’s Bungalows, and found the old Kaplan’s sign faded and fallen to the ground, the bungalows in ruins. We were invited into the “Big House,” which somehow didn’t seem so big. I was devastated. 

But those childhood summers at Kaplan’s Bungalows were magical, and the memories are indelible. The Catskills, and Livingston Manor, were, and remain, my happy place.