The Best Accommodations
The Story of World-Class Hostess, Jennie Grossinger
With her hardworking spirit and genuine interest in every person, Jennie Grossinger turned her family’s wildly successful resort into a springboard for spreading kindness and charity
The world renowned Grossinger’s Hotel, the iconic Jewish resort located in the old Borscht Belt of New York’s Catskill mountains, was almost a city in itself. The 1200-acre retreat boasted sprawling golf courses, tennis courts, an outdoor skating rink and a ski slope with artificial snow, along with its own airport, post office and fire department. And reigning as queen over this mini-Paradise was Jennifer Grossinger.
Daughter of the founders of the hotel—Asher Selig and Malka Grossinger—Jennifer was one of the world’s greatest hostesses and the architect who poured her soul into the development of this multi-million dollar resort. For seven decades, until its doors closed in 1986, the Grossinger’s Hotel served as respite for over 150,000 guests a year. To many upward striving individuals, staying at Grossinger’s was evidence of having “made it.”
But Jennifer’s accomplishments were far from simply monetary. In recognition of her benevolence, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller proclaimed June 16, 1968 Jennie Grossinger Day in New York State. She “exemplified the American Dream of success from humble beginnings and a lifetime of humanitarian achievement for others rarely equaled in the annals of the United States,” Governor Rockefeller wrote.
Hard Times in Galicia
The oldest of three, Jennifer Grossinger was born on June 16, 1892 in Baligrod, a town in Galicia, which was part of the former Austro-Hungarian empire. Her mother Malka (nee Grumet) was the daughter of an innkeeper and therefore well-trained in cooking and the management of an inn. Jennifer’s father, Asher Selig Grossinger, was a farmer who lived about 30 miles away from her mother’s family. The two were introduced through a shadchan; the third time they met was under the chupah.
After Jennifer’s sister Lottie was born, Selig Grossinger (as he was called) realized that Galicia’s severe winters were limiting the crops he was able to grow; with time, his farming would be unable to sustain them. His cousin had been urging him to come to New York’s East Side which was predominantly Jewish and offered free education (whereas schooling in Galicia was very expensive). Selig decided to try his luck in Manhattan.
In 1897, when Jennie was only five years old, Selig left the farm in the care of his wife and traveled by ship to New York with the goal of raising money to bring his family over too. Three years later, the precious steamship tickets arrived. After arriving by train in Hamburg, Germany, Jennie, her mother and sister sailed on the S.S. Potsdam to New York. Malka’s nine-year-old nephew, Gershon Grumet, came with them to join his family in the U.S.
Life in the New World
In New York, Jennie was exposed to all sorts of new experiences. One of the most exciting was the showers—she looked forward to her weekly trip to the baths several blocks from their home. Jennie’s parents enrolled her in a Talmud Torah affiliated with one of the small shuls on the East Side, and she absorbed much about Yiddishkeit. She also attended public school where, because she didn’t know English, Jennie was placed in first grade instead of third with the other eight-year-olds. It was a year before Jennie finally learned English, but not enough to promote her to a class with girls her own age. Always a head taller than her classmates and almost three years older, Jennie took everything in stride.
In New York, Malka gave birth to a baby boy, Hershele (Harry), who changed the family dynamics. At first he seemed like the perfect child, but at 18 months, doctors confirmed what his parents had begun to suspect: Hershele was a deaf mute. As long as he lived, they were told, he would never hear or speak.
Unwilling to accept this sentence for her son, Malka Grossinger decided to travel to Rebbes in Europe who might pray for him and recommend specialists in Vienna or Berlin, the medicine capitals of the world at the time. In 1904, Jennie watched her mother and her two siblings (since Lottie was very young, she accompanied her mother) sail for Hamburg, and she and her father moved in with an aunt.
Life was difficult for Selig and Jennie. Selig would work twelve hour days pressing pants in a sweatshop, and the long hours were slowly wearing him down. Jennie tried to think of ways to ease his burden. She was determined to work and bring in some money each week. But she was thirteen, and according to the law, she had to be at least fourteen to work. Nevertheless she decided not to report to high school in the fall. Instead, Jennie bought a pair of high-heeled shoes, an ankle-length brown wool skirt and put her hair up in a bun to look older. She obtained a job as a buttonhole maker in the factory managed by her great Uncle Joe, eventually earning $10 to $12 a week.
Jennie was able to get by without working on Shabbos, but she did have to work on Sundays, when the elevator man was off. On those days, she would trudge up 11 flights of stairs to get to the loft on the 12th floor where she sewed buttonholes. The climb was worth the effort, because she was helping her father. Jennie enrolled in night school after work, where she was placed in fifth grade. With the aid of a dictionary that became her best friend, she received an education.
Malka wrote home weekly but none of the rabbis or specialists were able to heal the deaf baby. After three and a half years, she and the children were on their way home. Malka wrote that Hershele would never hear but she believed it was G-d’s will and she made her peace with it. Upon arrival in the U.S., Hershele was enrolled in a school where he was taught to communicate with sign language.
A String of Bad Luck
While Malka was away, Selig had bought a kosher meat business from a retiring butcher. Unfortunately, there were never enough customers and, after two months, he had to accept defeat. Selig then tried his hand at operating a small dairy shop. But the number of dairy shops on the Lower East Side far exceeded the need, so Selig made only enough money to pay his bills. He decided to look for another opportunity to invest.
In the meanwhile, Jennie married her first cousin Harry Grossinger just weeks before her 20th birthday, and they moved into an apartment next to her parents. Harry had been working in Chicago and had a promising future but agreed to stay on the East Side so Jennie could be near her family. He took a job in a men’s clothing factory in New York.
Still determined to own his own business, Selig opened a dairy restaurant. Jennie was working there when she was expecting her first baby. Unfortunately, the baby was born a month before her due date; the baby lived only twenty-four hours. Despite her terrible pain, Jennie was strengthened by her mother’s faith.
“G-d is good,” Malka reminded her. “We do not understand His ways but there is a purpose in everything He does.”
The dairy restaurant did not last. Profits were small, and Selig couldn’t afford to hold on to it. He was physically ill and psychologically drained when his physician recommended a vacation for a few weeks in the country.
In the fresh mountain air, Jennie’s father became a new person and decided to purchase a farm. Jennie and her husband added $200 they’d saved to Selig’s $450 for a down payment on a 35-acre farm in Sullivan County near Ferndale, which cost $3500 at the time.
Jennie’s husband Harry kept his job in New York and would come up to the Catskills for Shabbos, while Jennie stayed with her parents all week on the farm. When it became obvious the farm would not yield enough income to support themselves and repay their debts, they decided to become innkeepers.
Hosts with the Most
The Grossingers arrived in the Catskills not long after the Jewish Agricultural Society organized by the philanthropist Baron de Hirsch helped resettle Jewish emigrants from Poland and Russia. The area was filled with Jews.
Soon after the Grossingers’ decision to take in boarders, a woman by the name of Mrs. Carolyn Brown approached their farm. She asked if she could stay with them as opposed to her current lodging, claiming it seemed quieter and more peaceful by the Grossingers.
“Mrs. Brown,” asked Jennie curiously, “we have never taken in boarders before so I know nobody recommended us. What made you stop and ask my mother if you could stay with us?”
“My husband and I have passed your farm several times,” Mrs. Brown replied. “I’ve always noticed that your mother wore a sheitel. I knew then that she was as religious as my husband and I are. Often we wonder if the food served at the boarding house where we stay is strictly kosher. When I saw the sheitel, I knew yours must be a truly kosher household.”
The Grossingers kept the name of the farm “Longbrook House,” as it was called by the previous owner. It didn’t have indoor plumbing, a telephone or electricity, but Malka’s cooking and the quiet, secluded location would hopefully bring in business. Instead of charging the customary $12 a week, the Grossingers decided to charge $9. Harry, the son-in-law, would spend half his time in New York trying to drum up customers.
Once, Harry was so desperate to get customers, he promised a woman her money back if she wasn’t satisfied. He gulped when he discovered she was coming with another nine people—a lot of mouths to feed for free if they weren’t happy. Fortunately, they were and when they left, the woman gave Harry a list of her acquaintances to contact and use her as a reference.
A Booming Business
To accommodate more guests, Selig built a six-room bungalow addition. By Memorial Day weekend of 1915, so many guests came to their boarding house that the Grossinger family had to give up their own rooms and move into the barn. Even the attic was used for guests. June brought even more guests, but it was too late to build additional rooms. Selig purchased six tents and twelve cots. Surprisingly, instead of being annoyed about sleeping on makeshift beds, many guests were pleased with the experience of roughing it outdoors.
The first July weekend brought about a fortuitous meeting. Guest Anna Mandelbaum was introduced to Carolyn Brown’s oldest daughter and was certain she would be perfect for her brother. Anna contacted him and told him to come up to meet the girl. The couple’s marriage was the first of thousands of shidduchim made at Grossingers. In fact, Jennie would give a free stay to any couple who met at the hotel.
The guests who began swarming to the boarding house shared their recipes from their native countries. A Romanian woman taught Malka how to prepare stuffed cabbage and mamaliga (a maize porridge), a Viennese guest demonstrated how to prepare Weinerschnitzel, a Russian grandmother introduced her to potato pirogen and a guest from Budapest showed her how to make Hungarian ghoulash.
Jennie and Lottie also had their roles at the boarding house. Before the advent of toilets, the two of them removed the chamber pots from each room, emptied and cleaned them with chloride. They washed the tablecloths and napkins in the brook and let them dry in the sun. Jennie and her sister would also pluck the chickens and help wash and dry the dishes.
The hotel expanded when Jennie’s father bought Terrace Hill House which had indoor plumbing and electricity. It was able to accommodate 150 more guests. As the facility grew, Jennie’s responsibilities extended beyond waiting on tables to reservations and customer service. She never wrote down reservations, but tried to remember them instead. As a result, more than once, more people arrived on a Friday than the resort could accommodate. Jennie would never say no to anyone; she’d try to get single girls to double up, which worked well with the haimish atmosphere. Shy by nature, Jennie began to develop a personality that years later would become the symbol of the hotel—she was genuinely interested in each person, guest or staff member.
When Jennie heard guests talk about the Laurel-in-the-Pines Hotel in Lakewood, New Jersey, she made a reservation to check it out. She noted the crystal stemware, the white starched jackets of the waiters and the formal dress of the guests. Slowly she implemented these changes, and the Grossinger’s Hotel became more elegant and classy.
As the years passed, the resort continued to expand. After World War I, a dining room seating four hundred was added to the main house. In the mid-twenties, a new forty-five room building was opened. The hotel had two completely separate kitchens, one for dairy and one for meat, each with its own dishwashing and silverware cleaning equipment, walk-in freezers and refrigerated storerooms. Grossinger’s staffed not only butchers but an in-house shochet. The hotel even made its own kosher l’Pesach wine which was sold to the public with Jennie’s signature on the label.
With all the emphasis on sophistication and atmosphere, Jennie and her family did not neglect their religious ideals. Smoking was banned on Shabbos—ashtrays were removed Friday evening not to be returned until motzei Shabbos. The hashgacha of the hotel was under the supervision of Rabbi Chaim Dov Chavel, well known for his critical editions of Sefer Hachinuch and Kisvei Ramban published by Mossad Harav Kook, as well as many other seforim. He had two mashgichim temidim on the premises.
In the book Jennie and the Story of Grossinger’s, author Joel Pomerantz describes how the eggs would be candled by X-ray to guarantee the absence of blood spots. But, he writes, the woman hired as egg candler—Rachel (“Mom”) Tuchman—was slightly suspicious of this newfangled invention and would crack each egg to check the yolks. She would personally inspect fifteen crates of thirty dozen—5,400 eggs a day!
With the installation of artificial snow for skiing in 1952, along with golf courses and tennis courts, the hotel attracted many non-Jews, including movie stars, politicians and writers. When King Baudouin of Belgium came to the U.S., Grossinger’s was one of the places he asked to see. Eleanor Roosevelt, Bobby Fischer and Senator Robert Kennedy are just three prominent personalities among thousands who visited. Since the 1920s, a special newsletter would appear each evening at the dinner table for guests to read about the activities and prominent guests at the hotel.
In order to permit non-Jewish guests to desecrate the Sabbath, the hotel was sold to a non-Jew every Friday evening till Saturday night.
Giving Back
For kind-hearted Jennie, the many dedicated employees at Grossinger’s were like family. When retiring workers had nowhere else to go, Jennie not only allowed them to live on the premises—she continued to pay them, without them having to lift a finger. She was also careful not to fire people even if they were not doing a good job; rather she would attempt to train them so they could stay. Every Motzaei Shabbos, she would sit on a high chair near the dining room and speak to each guest as he or she would leave. And every day she would go around to each of her employees and ask them how they were doing and about their families.
Hashem repaid her chassadim by turning the hotel into a multi-million dollar venture, which Jennie used, in turn, to do more good. It’s not surprising, for example, that Jennie raised ten million dollars in World War II bonds during World War II. A U.S. WW II bomber was named Grossinger’s.
Jennie was honored with more than one hundred citations for the charity that she donated. Her fundraising for disease research and contributions to hospitals were honored in Israel where medical facilities in Tel Aviv and Tzfas are named for her.
When Jennie’s husband passed away in 1964, she turned the hotel over to her two children Paul and Elaine. Jennie passed away in her sleep at Grossinger’s at the age of eighty.
Yehi zichrah baruch.