Download or read book The Catskill Mountain House written by Roland Van Zandt and published by Black Dome Press. This book was released on 1966 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Catskills written by Stephen M. Silverman and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Catskills (“Cat Creek” in Dutch), America’s original frontier, northwest of New York City, with its seven hundred thousand acres of forest land preserve and its five counties—Delaware, Greene, Sullivan, Ulster, Schoharie; America’s first great vacationland; the subject of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School paintings that captured the almost godlike majesty of the mountains and landscapes, the skies, waterfalls, pastures, cliffs . . . refuge and home to poets and gangsters, tycoons and politicians, preachers and outlaws, musicians and spiritualists, outcasts and rebels . . . Stephen Silverman and Raphael Silver tell of the turning points that made the Catskills so vital to the development of America: Henry Hudson’s first spotting the distant blue mountains in 1609; the New York State constitutional convention, resulting in New York’s own Declaration of Independence from Great Britain and its own constitution, causing the ire of the invading British army . . . the Catskills as a popular attraction in the 1800s, with the construction of the Catskill Mountain House and its rugged imitators that offered WASP guests “one-hundred percent restricted” accommodations (“Hebrews will knock vainly for admission”), a policy that remained until the Catskills became the curative for tubercular patients, sending real-estate prices plummeting and the WASP enclave on to richer pastures . . . Here are the gangsters (Jack “Legs” Diamond and Dutch Schultz, among them) who sought refuge in the Catskill Mountains, and the resorts that after World War II catered to upwardly mobile Jewish families, giving rise to hundreds of hotels inspired by Grossinger’s, the original “Disneyland with knishes”—the Concord, Brown’s Hotel, Kutsher’s Hotel, and others—in what became known as the Borscht Belt and Sour Cream Alps, with their headliners from movies and radio (Phil Silvers, Eddie Cantor, Milton Berle, et al.), and others who learned their trade there, among them Moss Hart (who got his start organizing summer theatricals), Sid Caesar, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Joan Rivers. Here is a nineteenth-century America turning away from England for its literary and artistic inspiration, finding it instead in Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and his childhood recollections (set in the Catskills) . . . in James Fenimore Cooper’s adventure-romances, which provided a pastoral history, describing the shift from a colonial to a nationalist mentality . . . and in the canvases of Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederick Church, and others that caught the grandeur of the wilderness and that gave texture, color, and form to Irving’s and Cooper’s imaginings. Here are the entrepreneurs and financiers who saw the Catskills as a way to strike it rich, plundering the resources that had been likened to “creation,” the Catskills’ tanneries that supplied the boots and saddles for Union troops in the Civil War . . . and the bluestone quarries whose excavated rock became the curbs and streets of the fast-growing Eastern Seaboard. Here are the Catskills brought fully to life in all of their intensity, beauty, vastness, and lunacy.

Download or read book Catskill Hotels written by Irwin Richman and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At one time, according to the Catskill Institute, there were more than a thousand hotels spread across the mountains of Greene, Ulster, Delaware, and Sullivan Counties. The Catskills were an exciting world full of pleasures to be enjoyed, with summer and winter activities characterized by entertainment, food, sports, card playing, and food again. Catskill Hotels, with a collection of some two hundred images, tells the story of this world, which began with America's first resort hotel, the Catskill Mountain House, continued with places such as the world-famous Grossinger's, and can still be found today at Kutsher's Country Club, the Mountain House at Lake Mohonk, and a few other hardy resorts.

Download or read book Old Mountain Dues written by Carl E. Wirtanen and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2008-12-18 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is the time when tourists from New York City, Boston, and even Chicago as well as other locations in the general vicinity would come to relax and rejoice in the bucolic scenery and grand vistas of the Catskill Mountains which were in Greene County, New York. In the middle 1800 ́s roads were bad and most travel to the hotels near and in the mountains was by stage over independently-owned turnpike toll roads. Early attempts by entrepreneurs and visionaries were fraught with delay and failure as they attempted to put the “Iron Horse” to work replacing the stage. One project that actually got to the point of operation even though it wasn ́t completed was the Canajoharie & Catskill Rail Road. This very early railroad lasted about two years, from 1838 to 1840 and then went bankrupt. By 1880, several hotels had been built along the ridge in the heart of the Catskills. While they weren ́t as elegant or well-located as the Catskill Mountain House which was built on a ledge overlooking the Hudson River Valley, they provided increased opportunity for another group of entrepreneurs. This new group had forgotten about the old C&C and began to plan to bring more people to the mountain hotels via railroads. Another entrepreneur from Pennsylvania, George Harding, began building an even grander hotel than Beach ́s Catskill Mountain House just south of it and overlooking the same valley. He opened the Kaaterskill Hotel in 1882 and immediately began to work to get a railroad connecting to his hotel. The owner of the Catskill Mountain House as well as the Day Line and Evening Line Steam ship companies ́ owners and investors planned and began building the Catskill Mountain Railroad. This railroad would run from where the steamships docked at “The Landing” at the mouth of the Catskill Creek and the Hudson River to the foot of the escarpment below the Catskill Mountain House. From there, tourists would take a stage up the Mountain House Road to the Catskill Mountain House preferably, or to other hotels. Their goal was to provide fast and comfortable transportation to as close as they could get to the Catskill Mountain House. With the threat of the Kaaterskill Hotel and the other railroads imminent, the Catskill Mountain Railroad was built in 1881 and opened through South Cairo on the old Catskill &Canajoharie road bed, and then late in 1882 on to Lawrenceville at the foot of the mountain. As the railroad looked forward to a good year in 1883 as its first full season of operation, it still needed more revenue to be fiscally viable. This is the background of the times in which the events of this tale take place in two weeks in early April, 1883. Lester Overmeyer was born early in the 19th century into the hotel business in Coxsackie and worked in his family ́s hotel for many years and then went to work for the hoteliers that leased the Mountain House Hotel on :South Mountain for some time. While there, he decided he ́d like to buy that hotel and build it into his own business. When he lost the opportunity to purchase it to C.L. Beach, he vowed to get it back someday, somehow. As the years passed, he became successful in New York City and invested in hotels in competition with Beach ́s Mountain House. He even built his own hotel in Tannersville to compete with Beach and participates in Harding ́s Kaaterskill Hotel venture as a way to indulge his hatred of Beach. However, Beach is much more successful and aggressive than Lester had foreseen. When he learns of Beach ́s attempts to build a new railroad to the Mountain House, he decides must take action to keep him from becoming even more successful in competing with Lester ́s investments. About the time he made this decision, a young, brand new Methodist minister, Riley Gillen, comes to Leeds, New York. It just so happens, he used to be a police officer in New York City, but for some reason he does not like to share with anyone, decided to make a major career change.

Download or read book Catskill Resorts written by Ross Padluck and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once the most famed resort destination of the world, the Catskills, New York's bygone Borscht Belt district, helped shape American culture and history. Through 363 images, take a trip back in time to relive the stories behind the theaters and nightclubs, the lavish lobbies where bellhops welcomed celebrities, and the vacuous dining rooms that served thousands of rich kosher meals each day.

Download or read book Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow written by Washington Irving and published by Orient Blackswan. This book was released on 1963 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A man who sleeps for twenty years in the Catskill Mountains wakes to a much-changed world.

Download or read book Mohonk Mountain House and Preserve written by Robi Josephson and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mohonk is a name of Native American origin first given to a lake high in the Shawangunk Mountains of Ulster County. Mohonk Lake was sculpted eons ago by the crushing weight of advancing glaciers. Nature's handiwork resulted in a crystal blue lake rimmed by stately hemlock trees and sheer conglomerate cliffs. Mohonk Mountain House was established at the lake in 1869 by Quaker twins Albert and Alfred Smiley. They and younger half-brother, Daniel Smiley, created a mountaintop haven for their guests-a 251-room hotel set on acres of woodlands and gardens. Today Daniel Smiley's descendants welcome visitors to the last of the grand Victorian hotels in the Shawangunk and Catskill Mountain region. The Mohonk Preserve was carved from lands of the Mountain House beginning in 1963 and bears witness to the vision of the Smiley family. Its mission is to protect over 6,400 acres of semi-wilderness through its education, research, and land stewardship programs. Today, it is the largest nature preserve supported by members and visitors in New York State.

Download or read book Making Mountains written by David Stradling and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2009-11-23 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over two hundred years, the Catskill Mountains have been repeatedly and dramatically transformed by New York City. In Making Mountains, David Stradling shows the transformation of the Catskills landscape as a collaborative process, one in which local and urban hands, capital, and ideas have come together to reshape the mountains and the communities therein. This collaboration has had environmental, economic, and cultural consequences. Early on, the Catskills were an important source of natural resources. Later, when New York City needed to expand its water supply, engineers helped direct the city toward the Catskills, claiming that the mountains offered the purest and most cost-effective waters. By the 1960s, New York had created the great reservoir and aqueduct system in the mountains that now supplies the city with 90 percent of its water. The Catskills also served as a critical space in which the nation's ideas about nature evolved. Stradling describes the great influence writers and artists had upon urban residents - especially the painters of the Hudson River School, whose ideal landscapes created expectations about how rural America should appear. By the mid-1800s, urban residents had turned the Catskills into an important vacation ground, and by the late 1800s, the Catskills had become one of the premiere resort regions in the nation. In the mid-twentieth century, the older Catskill resort region was in steep decline, but the Jewish "Borscht Belt" in the southern Catskills was thriving. The automobile revitalized mountain tourism and residence, and increased the threat of suburbanization of the historic landscape. Throughout each of these significant incarnations, urban and rural residents worked in a rough collaboration, though not without conflict, to reshape the mountains and American ideas about rural landscapes and nature.

Download or read book Hudson Valley Ruins written by Thomas E. Rinaldi and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2006 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An elegant homage to the many deserted buildings along the Hudson River--and a plea for their preservation.

Download or read book Summer Resorts Along the West Shore of Hudson River and in the Catskill Mountains written by New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railway Company and published by . This book was released on 1884 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Catskill Mountains Ulster Delaware R R and Connections written by and published by . This book was released on 1892 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Catskills Alive written by Francine Silverman and published by Hunter Publishing, Inc. This book was released on 2003-05 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Less than a day's drive from Boston, New York and Philly, the Catskill Mountains have long been a popular weekend retreat for city folk. The attractions are many - quiet lakes, scenic hikes, top-notch resorts, crafts and some of the country's best fly-fishing spots.

Download or read book Growing Up at Grossinger s written by Tania Grossinger and published by Skyhorse. This book was released on 2008-06-17 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "To be devoured in one non-stop gulp...fascinating reading."—The New York Post From 1919 to 1986, Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel provided a summer retreat from the city heat for New York's Jews, and entertained the great, the near-great, and the not so great, Jews and Gentiles alike. A melting pot of the Borscht Belt, sports, and show-biz worlds, loyal visitors included Red Buttons, Rocky Marciano, Eddie Fisher, and Jackie Robinson. Tania Grossinger grew up there. In her fascinating insider's account of life in the hospitality industry, she sheds light on how hotel children keep up with the frenetic pace of life, and how they come to grips with the outside world (which intrudes now and again), sex (happening in every room), and, occasionally, their intellectual interests. Growing Up at Grossinger's is both a wonderful coming-of-age story and a sentimental reading of a chapter of the Jewish experience in America that has now closed. 25 b/w photographs. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Download or read book The Borscht Belt written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Borscht Belt, which features essays by Stefan Kanfer and Jenna Weissman Joselit, presents Marisa Scheinfeld's photographs of abandoned sites where resorts, hotels, and bungalow colonies once boomed in the Catskill Mountain region of upstate New York.

Download or read book Sanctified Landscape written by David Schuyler and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-27 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hudson River Valley was the first iconic American landscape. Beginning as early as the 1820s, artists and writers found new ways of thinking about the human relationship with the natural world along the Hudson. Here, amid the most dramatic river and mountain scenery in the eastern United States, Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper created a distinctly American literature, grounded in folklore and history, that contributed to the emergence of a sense of place in the valley. Painters, led by Thomas Cole, founded the Hudson River School, widely recognized as the first truly national style of art. As the century advanced and as landscape and history became increasingly intertwined in the national consciousness, an aesthetic identity took shape in the region through literature, art, memory, and folklore-even gardens and domestic architecture. In Sanctified Landscape, David Schuyler recounts this story of America's idealization of the Hudson Valley during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Schuyler's story unfolds during a time of great change in American history. At the very moment when artists and writers were exploring the aesthetic potential of the Hudson Valley, the transportation revolution and the rise of industrial capitalism were transforming the region. The first generation of American tourists traveled from New York City to Cozzens Hotel and the Catskill Mountain House in search of the picturesque. Those who could afford to live some distance from jobs in the city built suburban homes or country estates. Given these momentous changes, it is not surprising that historic preservation emerged in the Hudson Valley: the first building in the United States preserved for its historic significance is Washington's Headquarters in Newburgh. Schuyler also finds the seeds of the modern environmental movement in the transformation of the Hudson Valley landscape. Richly illustrated and compellingly written, Sanctified Landscape makes for rewarding reading. Schuyler expertly ties local history to national developments, revealing why the Hudson River Valley was so important to nineteenth-century Americans-and why it is still beloved today.

Download or read book Picturing America Thomas Cole and the Birth of American Art written by Hudson Talbott and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating look at artist Thomas Cole's life takes readers from his humble beginnings to his development of a new painting style that became America's first formal art movement: the Hudson River school of painting. Thomas Cole was always looking for something new to draw. Born in England during the Industrial Revolution, he was fascinated by tales of the American countryside, and was ecstatic to move there in 1818. The life of an artist was difficult at first, however Thomas kept his dream alive by drawing constantly and seeking out other artists. But everything changed for him when he was given a ticket for a boat trip up the Hudson River to see the wilderness of the Catskill Mountains. The haunting beauty of the landscape sparked his imagination and would inspire him for the rest of his life. The majestic paintings that followed struck a chord with the public and drew other artists to follow in his footsteps, in the first art movement born in America. His landscape paintings also started a conversation on how to protect the country's wild beauty. Hudson Talbott takes readers on a unique journey as he depicts the immigrant artist falling in love with--and fighting to preserve--his new country.

Download or read book Catskill Mountain Waltzes and Airs written by Molly Mason and published by . This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of 62 original waltzes and airs by Jay Ungar & Molly Mason including their classics: "Ashokan Farewell," "The Lovers' Waltz," "The Snowstorm," "Love of My Life" and many more. Jay & Molly live in New York's Catskill Mountains where they run the legendary Ashokan Music & Dance Camps. Highly influenced by music taught at Ashokan, their infectiously playable original tunes reflect a wide variety of styles and moods from Western waltzes, to French Musettes, to Celtic airs, to Scandinavian and Eastern European sounding melodies. Each tune is complete with chord symbols, a descriptive paragraph, and several include illustrative photos.