Brown's Hotel (Catskills)

Brown’s Hotel was a nationally known resort complex located in the Borscht Belt area of upstate New York, in the Catskill Mountains. It was one of the largest and most elaborate establishments of its kind during an era when the entire region prospered as a tourist destination. From the 1940s to the 1980s, the hotel was a popular vacation destination for many upper-middle-class families living in the New York City metropolitan area. Jewish-American families were welcomed and even catered to specifically by the hotels in the Borscht Belt during a time period when anti-semitism was prevalent in the hospitality industry. Filling a niche, the area quickly became a mecca for Jewish-American families. Brown's Hotel was located in the hamlet of Loch Sheldrake in the Town of Fallsburg, Sullivan County, New York.

By the 1940s, Sullivan County, New York had become a popular resort area in the Catskill Mountains north of New York City frequented primarily by middle and upper-class Jewish families living in the Northeast. The area became known as the The Borscht Belt or the Jewish Alps.

In 1944 in the hamlet of Loch Sheldrake, New York within the Town of Fallsburg, Charles Brown, owner of several hotels, purchased the Black Apple Inn from the Appel family for US $70,000. The Appels had built the hotel in the early 1920s. After making an additional $100,000 in renovations, the 473-room hotel opened as Charles and Lillian Brown’s Hotel and Country Club with the phone number Hurleyville 150. The resort became known for the wealthy patrons it attracted, competing against the larger establishments in the area. Without the advantage of having a golf course, the owners concentrated their capital on the finest food and big names in entertainment to entice tourists. The hotel’s Brown Derby night club would book big names like comedians Bob Hope, Buddy Hackett.Jackie Mason,Woody Allen, and George Burns and musicians Sammy Davis, Jr., Tony Bennett,Harry Belafonte, and Liberace. The hotel also welcomed its share of celebrity guests such as Hollywood starlet Jayne Mansfield and boxer Jack Dempsey. Not only did the area attract families and celebrities, but Italian and Jewish gangsters as well. During the 1940s the bodies of their numerous victims would turn up in Loch Sheldrake, a lake less than two miles east of the hotel. By the 1950s the mobsters had shifted their focus to Las Vegas and Cuba.

...
Wikipedia