Bungalow colonies in the Catskills are making a comeback

Just behind the Victorian-style Kenoza Hall hotel in Sullivan County, N.Y., are 10 small white-and-green structures. They have shiplap siding, shingled roofs and covered front porches elevated on stilts, echoing the architecture that proliferated in the Catskills region in the early 20th century. They’re situated close together, surrounding the pool, spa and firepits, encouraging community among guests.

Some might call them cottages or cabins, but for those familiar with the history of the Catskills, they’re unmistakably bungalows. You’re unlikely to see a singular bungalow in the Catskills; they were built in colonies — groups of cottages that share central amenities and gathering areas.

"We situated them specifically so that they relate to each other, so that it’s like a true bungalow colony," says Sims Foster, Kenoza Hall co-owner and Sullivan County native, whose great-grandmother had a bungalow colony in the 1920s.

The bungalow colonies of the Borscht Belt — the nickname given to the summer resorts frequented by Jewish people in the Catskill Mountains — were at their height between the 1940s and mid-1960s, according to Sullivan County historian John Conway. They’ve been enshrined in pop culture in movies such as "Dirty Dancing" and "A Walk on the Moon" and "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" TV series.

By the 1950s, there were about 50,000 bungalows in the Catskills, spread across nearly 2,000 colonies, according to a New York Times article from May 1953. Only a fraction remain today.

But now the communal vacation communities are making a comeback in the Catskills. Many of the contemporary hotels that have opened in the last decade amid a renaissance in the region are finding inspiration from the bungalow colonies of the golden age of the Catskills.

A refuge for Jewish families

The mountainous Catskills region, located about 125 miles northwest of Manhattan, has attracted city dwellers looking to escape summer heat since mid-to-late 19th century, according to Conway, before air travel was ubiquitous. While the Catskills covers several counties, Sullivan County became known as a refuge for Jewish families, who were banned from many other hotels in the early- and mid-20th century. In the 1900s, Jewish people began opening their own hotels here to accommodate Jewish immigrants living in New York City who were desperate to re-create the communities they had left in Europe. A few decades later, the region was packed with resorts and bungalow colonies.

Bungalow colonies are lesser known compared with the region’s more famous resorts, such as Grossinger’s and the Concord. These colonies evolved from kuchaleins, ("cook for yourself" in Yiddish), where renters shared a communal kitchen. Later, when each bungalow had its own kitchen and living space, summer renters still shared nearly everything else, from the pool to the telephone.

"A bungalow colony is like an Americanized version of the shtetl, in that you have a community arrayed around a common space with shared buildings and purposes, but it also gives you the privacy that Americans had come to expect — you have your own dwelling," said Andrew Jacobs, a New York Times reporter and board president of the Borscht Belt Museum in Ellenville, N.Y.

My 101-year-old grandmother, Libby Weingarden, who grew up at her parents’ Catskills hotel, the Kantrowitz House, said the bungalow colonies were like "little communes" people returned to each year.

"The idea was get out of New York City and take the kids if you couldn’t afford camp. The women and children would come and stay together for the entire summer, and the men would come up by train on Friday and leave again Sunday night," she recalls.

While they were more affordable than hotels, bungalow colonies also offered vacationers a built-in community. It was "a place that was all Jews that you could hang around with, and have tons of activities, and you wound up knowing people and having friends," says Phil Brown, head of the Catskills Institute and a sociology and health sciences professor at Northeastern University. "And once the colony had 15 or 20 bungalows, there would be a day camp for the kids while the parents played cards, Mahjong, softball, and they swam."

The casino (not the gambling kind) was the heart of any bungalow colony where the community gathered for games, parties and entertainment. Singers and comedians who frequented the Catskills hotels, such as such as Rodney Dangerfield, Jerry Lewis, Jackie Mason and Barbra Streisand, would sometimes perform at the larger bungalow casinos as well, says Brown.

Eventually, some families purchased their own private colonies, like my family did. My great-grandparents bought a Hurleyville, N.Y., property in 1964 after they closed down the Kantrowitz House, when their five children were adults with families of their own.

"They found this ideal place with a swimming pool and five bungalows," says Weingarden. "It was one acre; we called it ‘God’s little acre.’ I think we paid $13,000 for it."

They called it Quinthaven, and every summer, the five families joined their parents there. "It was a bonding that the cousins never forgot. They didn’t go to camp; they made their own camp. The older cousins were the counselors, and they had arts and crafts, swimming, baseball and badminton," Weingarden said. "This gave mother and father so much joy, because when summertime came, we were all together again."

My family sold our property in the early 2000s. By then, the golden age of the Catskills had faded. Some hotels and colonies hung on into the 1980s, according to Conway, but most had closed by the 1990s, with many hotels and colonies simply abandoned.

Allen Frishman, who was a building inspector from 1987 to 2011 for Fallsburg, N.Y., salvaged what he could whenever he inspected an old building, including signs, menus, brochures, hotel uniforms and even furniture. Many of these items are now on display at the Borscht Belt Museum.

A bungalow renaissance

Today, most of the remaining colonies are owned by ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups, but a few secular ones endure, including Lansmans Co-op in Woodbourne, N.Y., and Rosmarins Cottages in Monroe, N.Y., which has been open since 1941. Rosmarins today consists of 96 bungalows — up from the original 43 — and amenities like basketball and pickleball courts, a pool and a casino, spread across more than 100 acres. It’s one of the few original bungalow colonies keeping the halcyon days of Jewish bungalow culture alive.

"It’s a great group of people that we have here now; they come here for the socialization," says Scott Rosmarin, owner of Rosmarins Cottages and grandson of the founder. "Here, it’s an even playing field. It’s not where one person is in a $5 million house, another’s in a million-dollar house, and somebody else is in a bungalow. Everybody here is in a cottage."

Amy Evans, 50, has been going to Rosmarins with her husband and two daughters every summer for the last 10 years. When they moved to New Jersey, they wanted a more free-range environment for their family vacations. When she heard about Rosmarins and discovered it was less than the cost of sleepaway camp and included a bungalow for the whole family for eight weeks, she was intrigued.

But she says it was really the community at Rosmarins that sealed the deal. "We have camp friends that we made as grown-ups," says Evans. "It’s a very close-knit community."

Some guests might want something more modern, though. Kenoza Hall initially took over an old boardinghouse in 2020. Two years later, it added the bungalows, joining a trend of hotels offering stand-alone accommodations while still embracing collective experiences.

"We wanted to create a bit of a social dynamic between the structures and the people that are in them," says Foster. "I definitely took inspiration from the ethos of the traditional bungalow colony up here in the Catskills. For example, we put in porch swings so you can sit and wave to your neighbor, stop by and chat."

Catskills hotels like Inness and Piaule opened with majority bungalow accommodations. Deer Mountain Inn and Scribner’s Lodge both recently added wood-shingled cabins to their offerings. At Scribner’s, the cabins are circular shaped, and in a separate area called the Rounds that has its own communal gathering building.

"The Rounds are a grouping, a colony, for a cohort to come up and really enjoy with friends," said owner Marc Chodock. "People yearn for community and in the city, that can be hard to find."

That desire for community is why the Camptown hotel baked communal interaction into its concept when it opened in 2023. When co-owner Kim Bucci took over the midcentury property, the 26 cabins were already there. But before opening, they renovated and created a swim club with grills and lawn games.

"Post pandemic, there’s an appreciation for the communal vacation," says Bucci. "People can come back to this larger playground where they can be outside all day, with kids running around."

She adds: "And that’s what the bungalow colonies did, they created these huge playgrounds for everyone, adults and kids."