ARTSCULTURE · HISTORICAL MARKER
Borscht Belt - Greenfield Park & Ulster Heights
Arts & Culture
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Greenfield Park and Ulster Heights were among many Catskill communities evocative of Eastern Europe for Ashkenazi Jews arriving in the early 20th century, whose forests, hills, and farms recalled countrysides where they had once lived. By the 1930s, Tudor architecture had become popular in America, and facades of stucco and wood appeared at the Tamarack Lodge, Seven Gables, and Grand Mountain Hotel. After World War II, the landscape and architecture together created an atmosphere of Old Europe that gave visitors, including Holocaust survivors, a powerful sense of place. Several bungalow colonies in the area, notably Excelsior Lodge, later renamed Four Seasons Lodge, were founded by survivors. In the 1960s, architect Morris Lapidus redesigned the Tamarack into a sleek Miami-inspired resort, where Buddy Hackett, Cream, Ella Fitzgerald, The Four Tops, Rod Stewart, and The Who performed. From the 1920s through the early 1970s, the Borscht Belt was the preeminent summer resort destination for hundreds of thousands of predominantly East Coast American Jews. Exclusion from existing establishments in the 1920s led Jewish entrepreneurs to create more than 500 resorts, 50,000 bungalows, and 1,000 rooming houses in Sullivan County and parts of Ulster County. The Borscht Belt provided a sense of community for working and vacationing Jews and strongly influenced American culture, especially entertainment, music, and sports. Beginning around 1960, it entered a gradual decline because of factors including the growth of suburbia, inexpensive airfare, and generational changes.
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