woodbourne

The Aladdin started out as a small farmhouse-- without even a formal name—whose owners took in boarders to make ends meet, and was then reborn as a boarding house called the Maple Lawn. 

Carrie Komito and her family owned and operated the Maple Lawn/Levbourne/Aladdin for more than 70 years, and through many changes. By the time the Maple Lawn had become the Hotel Levbourne, it had evolved into quite a different place, and by 1940 it accommodated 300 guests, mainly in two large four-story Mission style buildings. Most of the hotels back then had, or at least attempted to project, a niche clientele, and the Levbourne advertised for “young folks,” offering them a “splendid 150-acre park, safe and away from traffic.”

The Levbourne boasted of the “finest professional tennis and handball courts,” as well as boating, fishing, baseball, ping-pong, horseback riding, and “a new open-air solarium for nude bathing.” It offered its guests a private bathing beach, a prominent social staff, a popular orchestra, and free transportation to and from the railroad station in South Fallsburg.

The Aladdin’s indoor pool was fairly basic compared to the one at the Pines, but it nonetheless represented a significant investment by the hotel’s owners.

“You had to either build an indoor pool or fall by the wayside,” Carrie Komito wrote in“Memories of a Catskill Hotelkeeper: Volume II,” published in 2006. (Curiously, there was no Volume I. Her earlier book, published in 2003, when she was 98 years old, was entitled “Memoir of a Catskill Hotelkeeper.”) “It all took a lot of money,” she wrote. “A lot of jewelry found new homes. I financed a glorious new indoor pool, which was built by my husband, whose engineering skills helped to keep the hotel afloat, even though he disagreed with the improvements. He wanted to get out of the business. He wanted to live a peaceful, normal life. But to tell the truth, I loved it, the excitement, the color, the glamour.”

Sadly, as was the case with so many of the hotels, the same indoor pool that allowed the Aladdin to keep pace with the larger, more elaborate resorts like the Pines, eventually led to its downfall. The expense of construction was difficult to recover, and the debt was too much for many struggling operations to handle. In addition, as Komito pointed out, many of the traditional guests could no longer afford the increased rates charged by the ever- improving hotels, so they stopped coming, or at least coming as often.

Both the outdoor and indoor pools at the Pines were much more elaborate than anything at the Aladdin. The outdoor pool, with its iconic bridge, was constructed in 1959 at a cost of $75,000. The bridge linked the cabanas on one side to a rooftop bar on the other. The indoor pool was added around 1960 as part of a major modernization and expansion. The pool, a new lobby and a card room were designed by New York City architect H.D. Phillips.

From RETROSPECT, by John Conway, Sullivan County Historian, June 23, 2023