Kutsher's Country Club, Monticello, N.Y.

Wilt Chamberlain (*21 Aug 1936 +12 Oct 1999) & Helen Wasser Kutsher (*11 July 1923 +19 March 2013) at Kutsher's Country Club where Wilton Norman worked as a bell-hop.

Wilt Chamberlain, Kansas, 1955.

Kutsher's basket ball team entertain guests.

Kutsher's bellhop squad from the shortest to the tallest (Wilt).

Wilt Chamberlain as a bellhop at Kutsher's in the summer of 1954.

Kutsher's dining room staff  pose for an annual picture in 1964. Much of the wait staff was made up of students working summer jobs to help pay for college or graduate school, appealing to the daughters of guests, just like the not-so-trustworthy Max Cantor character in "Dirty Dancing."

Ron Maxman, Bruce Bleieiss, Fassberg, Barry Gold, Unknown at Kutsher's D.R. summer 1978.

Broadway, Monticello in the 1950s.

Monticello in the Summer of 1964. The Rialto plays Edward Dmytryk's 'Carpetbaggers' with George Peppard & Carroll Baker.

The Broadway on Broadway, Monticello. Photo taken in 1989. 

The Broadway marquee more recently...

Monticello's principal thorough-fare was Broadway. The main street through the town was widened and lined with restaurants, hotels, and movie theatres such as the Art Deco Rialto.

Today however, most of the grand buildings found on Broadway are shuttered and closed. The old red brick buildings and store fronts are redolent of an Edward Hopper main street, but for all its charming vintage look, it is hard to shake off a melancholy air of decline.

The Rialto itself was torn down about a decade ago. For a while its evocative marquee and front was kept on Broadway, although that has now gone as well. 

Sullivan County Trust Co. in Monticello, N.Y. 

We’ve made a few trips to explore the abandoned resorts of the Borscht Belt of New York. Once places like Grossinger’s, the Concord, Kutscher’s , the Nevele and the Pines, were the epitome of a swanky summer holiday for New Yorkers. All through the Catskills were dozens of all-inclusive resorts, glitzy enough to entice the mostly Jewish, upper-middle class holiday makers from the city, and today virtually all of them have either been torn down, or lie in ruins. But if you were spending your summer vacation in the Borscht Belt, chances were you made your way through the town of Monticello. So what happened to the town at the centre of them all?

We went to go explore old, historic Monticello, to discover a town that has struggled since the heyday of the 1950s, but with light at the end of a tunnel in the form of a new casino.

Named after Thomas Jefferson’s plantation home, Monticello can be found a few hours north of New York City. The largest town in Sullivan County, during the 1940s and 50s – the peak years of the Borscht Belt – tens of thousands would pass through the picturesque town every week. 

A harness horse racing track opened in 1958, nicknamed the Mighty M. As the Borscht Belt thrived, the area attracted the likes of Woody Allen, Elizabeth Taylor and Mel Brooks. So many people passed through Monticello, the town became known as the ‘Gateway to the Catskills’.

Monticello Inn-Hotel in the 1940s.

Monticello Inn-Hotel in the 2020s.

Monticello business section in the 1800s.

Sullivan County & vicinities in an old map... when Woodridge was called Centreville.

Helen Wasser Kutsher

article written by Steven Israel

It was never the biggest of the Catskill resorts, nor did it have the international acclaim. And it wasn’t Jerry Lewis’ favorite place.

And while other hotels touted their enormous dining rooms, multiple golf courses and outdoor pools and maze of corridors leading to more than 1,000 guest rooms, Kutsher’s Country Club countered with the gracious handshake, warm smile and motherly care from hotel matriarch Helen Kutsher. No resort owner could make any guest feel more at home.

And now amazingly – and many would say sadly – Kutsher’s has become the last of what is estimated to have been nearly 1,000 hotels in the Catskills during the heyday of the 1950s.

What began in 1907 when brothers Max and Louis Kutsher started taking in guests at their small rooming house on 200 acres evolved – guided by the keen business mind of Louis Kutsher’s son, Milton – into a 1,500-acre resort empire with hotel, condos and sports camps. It survived the most turbulent years a century later under the watchful eyes of Milton and Helen’s son, Mark.

How did they do it?  

With a lot of lox, a lot of luck and a lot of love.

In 2007 I was able to convince Helen Kutsher to take some time away from her guests and talk about her life, her Milton and her hotel, which was celebrating its 100th anniversary.

Do you remember your first summer at Kutsher’s?

It was 1934. My mother died a year and a half before that. I came up with my father’s friends, who didn’t want my brother and I to be in New York alone in the summer. We spent several weeks at Kutsher’s. I was 10.

How did you meet Milton?

I knew Milton since I was 10. My stepmother (Rebecca Kutsher) – I never called her that – was his aunt. She was married to Max Kutsher. My mother-inlaw and my mother had it worked out. There were four boys in the family: Milton, Joe and the Bogner boys, Mannie and Carl, who were cousins. They figured, “Helen has to be for someone; we have to keep her in the family.” I made a wise choice. Milton and I both made a wise choice. This year we would have been married 61 years.

And you helped run the hotel?

Not bad for a shy, introverted girl. My mother kept saying, “There’s nothing you can’t do” and Milton agreed with that.

No one would call you a shy, introverted girl now.

No, but that’s from their influence. My mother used to disappear every day at about 12-12:30 so she could go shopping. But she would disappear so I’d be forced if a guest came to greet them. I’d stand for a while, hoping they’d go away. They broke me of my shyness. Forced me into doing things I never would have done. Like giving them a strong handshake. My mother said, “Reach for their hands. Look in their eyes. People need to know that you are paying attention to them.”

And you know their names.

It’s getting a little harder to remember, so I check our arrival list every day, who’s coming in, what they like. If we need to send them food, send them wine. And greet them. They’re part of my family. I also use a book I’ve had for 50 years. It’s got information about guests and our staff. Birthdays, anniversaries, what people want. God forbid I should lose the book.

How did you balance being a mother and hotel matriarch?

It’s not easy. Not easy at all. I thought it was normal to work 23 hours a day. We always ate our dinners together. Breakfast was a fast deal. We did have a chauffeur, Murray, who lived with us. He’d get the bagels, take the children to school and watch over them. They resented it. They’d say, we can’t do nything; Murray’s watching us. That’s how we survived.

Are there times when you just want to lounge around in a bathrobe?

That luxury I never had. But now, after all these years, I eat breakfast at home, which I never used to do. We all grew up like that. If you married a hotel man, and you weren’t a working wife, something was wrong. I’d say, “She really hates the business,” because how can you be there and not be active in some form?

What did you want your role to be?

I just worked my way into it. (Laughing). They’d be talking of women’s lib. I didn’t even know what it meant. I went to Milton, “What are they talking about, women’s lib?” He said, “That’s what you’re doing.” Hotel women were an essential part of the business. Milton couldn’t do it all.

They say Catskill guests can be tough.

(As I ask Mrs. Kutsher, two guests interrupt to say hello to her.) They check their room. If they’re used to 810, they don’t want 811. They say, “That’s my room. My room.”

You give pep talks to the staff?

Every Monday I’d go into the dining room and talk with all the waiters and busboys. They were all going to college. I told them, “I know you’ll be a doctor, a lawyer ... whatever your profession. But if you want to be successful in whatever your purpose is in life, you have to be a successful busboy and waiter. That’s what will follow you through life. This is important. It forms your thinking.”

The hotel was always updating.

I’d be handling reservations and people would call and ask, “Do you have an indoor pool?” We didn’t at the time. But Milton said, just tell them eventually we’ll have one. This year we’re building a golf course and next year we’ll have an indoor pool. I remember selling a room in the main building that wasn’t built yet. Milton said sell the first two floors of the main building and we’ll have it built.

Can you believe, 100 years?

People ask, “Have you been there all the time?” I say, “No, I skipped a few years when I went to school.” It goes over their heads.

How has Kutsher’s survived?

There was a very personalized feeling here. Guests felt they were coming home. They could have gone to the Concord or anywhere else, but they would be just another guest. Our people didn’t want that. Each hotel was different, each one pretty good in its own right. Every hotel had its own personality. And you’re the personality of Kutsher’s. My grandson says, “You’re the eyes of the hotel, Nanna.”

Helen Wasser Kutsher in 2007, when the Country Club became 100 years old. Helen died 6 years later on March 2013, at age 89.

Mark, Helen & Milton Kutsher. 

Helen Kutsher at a night club function.

Monticello - Helen Kutsher, matriarch of the last family-run resort in the Catskills, was remembered Thursday, 21st March 2013, both as the warm-hearted mother, grandmother and friend, and legendary hotel owner called simply "The Best."

More than 250 friends, former guests and family attended Mrs. Kutsher's funeral at the Landfield Avenue Synagogue in Monticello. Her son, daughters and grandchildren told the assembled that she loved her guests for more than 50 years, and her family even more. Mrs. Kutsher died Tuesday at a hospital in Philadelphia. She was 89.

Her son, Mark, and daughters, Mady Kutsher Prowler and Karen Kutsher Wilson, recalled how Helen Kutsher had to overcome a tough childhood. Her mother died when she was 10 and she came to the Catskills one summer. She was soon taken under wing by Rebecca Kutsher, who later married Helen's widowed father. Helen worked at Kutsher's before World War II and then married Milton Kutsher, Rebecca's nephew, when he returned from the war. Helen soon became the face and personality of the resort as it grew to one of the largest in that era.

Stories abounded about Mrs. Kutsher's sharp wit, grit and warmth. She met her guests at the door with a firm handshake, always immaculately dressed in a scarf, her hair always neatly coiffed.

She never forgot to send a birthday card. When her health started failing and her friends stopped getting regular birthday cards and greetings, they would call the family and ask if she was OK.

One of the biggest laughs at the funeral came when Mark Kutsher said his mother, when she was a student at SUNY Delhi, did an internship — at Grossinger's, which was Kutsher's great rival at the time. Mark Kutsher said the families were actually friends. When she showed up to do the internship, the Grossingers offered to let her stay in a fancier room.

"She said, 'No, I will stay with the staff,'" Mark Kutsher said. "That was part of the woman she was."

Helen Kutsher was known as a stickler, greeting her guests at the door by name and walking the halls, picking up bits of paper from the carpet so the place would be spotless. "She was a schmoozer extraordinaire," said her grandson, Matthew Prowler. "But it wasn't an act."

In summer 1954, a high school basketball star named Wilt Chamberlain worked as a bellhop at Kutsher's Country Club by day, and at night played on the resort's basketball team made up of top college talent. The Kutsher's team, led by then-Kutsher's athletic director and Celtics legendary coach, Red Auerbach, would compete against the teams of other Catskill hotels to entertain the guests. For Chamberlain, it was the beginning of a life-long friendship with the Kutsher family.

Milton Kutsher & Louis Armstrong sometime in the 1950s. 

Milton Kutsher's thombstone.

How to reach Kutscher's Country Club by car from NYC and Metropolitan Area: (less than 2 hours) George Washington Bridge to New Jersey Palisades Parkway to New York State Thruway North.  Proceed on Thruway to Exit 16 and proceed on Quickway, Rt 17, to Exit 105-B. Turn left at first traffic light and follow signs to Kutsher's.