Nevele Grand
The Catskill mountains sit just outside the hustle and bustle of New York City, yet the feel like a different world all together. Through winding mountain roads and small towns you see street signs and restaurants with menus, all written in Hebrew. Today the Catskills have nearly been forgotten but they once held an important place in the world of Jewish Heritage. In the 1940’s through the 1980’s Jewish families would leave nearby cities like New York and New Haven where they felt like outcasts. They would spend the summer with other who shared their religion in resorts scattered through the Catskills. This is the scene depicted in the infamous Dirty Dancing. While that movie was based upon a now demolished resort, the thousands of others in the region where not all too different.
Nevele Grand was founded in 1901 as a country club by Charles Slutsky. During this time, the family also operated the Fallsview hotel nearby. In the 20’s and 30’s many changes were made, but the biggest was bringing the two operations together. The new business was a resort and a country club and would go by the name Nevele Grand Hotel. When business boomed in the late 40’s, Nevele began to expand. Although Slutsky was dead by 1931, the business stayed within the family. His son, Charles, and grandson, Charles, oversaw the business as it grew through the 60’s. In the 1950’s the hotel was remade in the modern style that dominates the Catskills. New wings were added to the property and connected by tunnels. In the early 1960s a new 10 story dodecaheronal tower was added, designed by Viola, Bernard & Phillips. At it’s peak in 1966, president Lyndon B. Johnson stayed here while inaugurating a new nearby hospital.
As time went on business began to slow for Nevele and all of the Catskill resorts. The very thing that built up the region is what lead to it’s demise; a search for acceptance. With each passing year, tolerance and acceptance of Jewish families grew. This meant that fewer and fewer families felt the need to find a haven to escape to each summer. Today, every road in the Catskills is littered with abandoned pools, all the remnants of long gone resorts. Nevele Grand was larger and included a country club and ski resort so it held on longer than most. In 1997, the Slutsky family sold the property. They had known that the writing was on the wall. The new owners failed to pay taxes and ran out of money by 2009 when the resort closed unceremoniously and without warning following the Fourth of July weekend. Since its closure, a half dozen plans to reutilize the property have been proposed. Each of them has failed to secure either state sponsorship or funding.
