Kutsher’s Hotel and Country Club – The Last Catskills Resort 

July 2026

Note: This article was originally in Part 1 of my Borscht Belt series profiling multiple former hotels and bungalow colonies, first published in November 2018. As I have photographed the Kutsher’s more than most other hotels in the borscht Belt over the past 6 years, I decided to make this entry a stand alone. You can start here for other articles in my Borscht Belt series: The crumbling remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland – The rise and fall of the Borscht Belt – Canadian Military History (militarybruce.com). Unless otherwise noted, photos taken by me were shot in October 2018.

Kutsher’s Hotel and Country Club was one of the best known and celebrated of the Catskills resorts during the heyday of the Borscht Belt. Along with Grossinger’s, it served as the basis for the fictional Kellerman’s Hotel in the 1987 film, Dirty Dancing. Many of the celebrated Jewish comedians of stage and screen in the last half of the 20th Century got their start in the Borscht Belt, including the stage of the Stardust Room at Kutsher’s.

Kutsher’s Hotel in Monticello was opened by Max and Louis Kutsher in 1907 as the Kutsher Brother’s Farmhouse, and later expanded into a hotel in the 1920s.

The hotel’s real expansion began in the 1950s, when it became one of the premiere destinations of the Borscht Belt complete with 400 resort rooms, an 18-hole golf course, and views of Kiamesha Lake.

The Stardust Room played host to early performances by many comedic talents such as Jerry Seinfeld and Joan Rivers.

In the 1950s and 60s, the hotel also hosted basketball tournaments, including the annual Maurice Stokes Benefit basketball game. 

NBA great Wilt Chamberlain once worked as a bellhop there.  At 7-feet-tall, Chamberlain was known to pass luggage through the second storey windows for guests staying on that floor.

At its peak, Kutsher’s also featured amenities such as two bungalow colonies, condos for executive guests, indoor ice skating, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis, racquetball, swimming, snow tubing, skiing, theatre, nightclub, two summer camps on-site and a lakefront.

With declining business in the early 2000s, Kutsher’s welcomed the All Tomorrow’s Parties music festivals, which staged concerts in the the Stardust Room in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Like many of the Borscht Belt hotels, owner Mark Kutcher, son of Milton and Helen, had hoped that casino gambling could serve to revitalize the area.

With little hope that gambling would be coming any time soon and a desire to retire from the business, Mark Kutsher contracted out the running of the resort in 2010 to Yossi Zablock, an enthusiastic businessman and former employee who spent summers growing up at Kutsher’s.

Zablock came in with ideas he hoped would revitalize the aging resort but in the end, the inevitable finally came in 2013, when the Kutcher family sold the hotel after operating it for 106 years, bringing the end for the last of the original Borscht Belt hotels. 

As the 2014 documentary Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort points out, Kutsher’s is the last surviving Catskills resort. While this is technically not true, as there are still other original Catskills resorts still operating, such as Honor’s Haven, formerly the Fallsview, and Hudson Valley Resort & Spa, formerly The Granit, Kutsher’s was the last Jewish resort in the Catskills still owned by the original family and operating under its original name.

The property was bought by Veria Lifestyle, who planned to demolish the old hotel and build a new resort offering yoga, golf, tennis and other healthy activities.  Most of the buildings were demolished in 2014, but during the demolition, it was discovered that the ground was contaminated and no new building could be constructed until the land was remediated. 

As a result, the new resort, named YO1 Longevity & Health Resort, was built south of the original site, just past the Rav Tov “Satmar Boy’s Camp, formerly the site of the Kutsher’s Sports Academy.  Situated beside Baileys Lake at 420 Anawana Lake Road, it was deemed to be a more picturesque location for the now resort, which opened in June 2018.

At the original Kutsher’s site, three buildings remained standing when the demolition was ceased:  the seven-storey Marquis guest tower, the nightclub building and the racquetball building.

Kutsher’s golf course remained open until the end of the summer of 2018.  Plans to rebuild the golf course were scrapped in the spring of 2019, when YO1 Wellness Center announced it was withdrawing an application to the Sullivan County Industrial Development Agency for nearly $128,000 in tax breaks to rebuild the golf course.   The golf course is now overgrown and it’s unlikely it will ever re-open.

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Kutsher’s Sports Academy

In 1968, Milton Kutsher bought the closed Harmony Country Club, around the corner on Anawana Lake Road, and turned it into the Kutsher’s Sports Academy.  The academy was held in such high regard that athletes like Joe DiMaggio and Wilt Chamberlain trained there in the off-season.  It also became the home of the annual Maurice Stokes Game, which had been held at Kutsher’s since 1958. 

The Stokes Game was an annual fundraising event to assist Stokes, a former Cincinnati Royals basketball player, with medical bills resulting from an on-court injury that eventually led to a seizure and permanent paralysis.  It continued to be held after Stokes died in April 1970, remaining an annual tradition until 1999 when it was discontinued, two months after the death of Chamberlain himself.

Mark Kutsher had previously leased the Kutsher Sports Academy in 2005 to Marc White, the longtime Executive Director.  In 2008, it was re-located to the Berkshires and later to the Lake Buel area, just outside Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  The property is now the Rav Tov “Satmar Boy’s Camp.

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Camp Anawana/Kutsher’s Camp Anawana

Originally opened in 1921 as a summer sleepaway camp beside Lake Anawana, owned by Anna Kahn.

In 1955, Camp Anawana partnered with nearby Kutsher’s and basketball coach Clair Bee to host Kutsher’s National All-Sports Camp.

After Milton Kutsher bought the closed nearby Harmony Country Club in 1968 to create Kutsher’s Sports Academy, he also bought Camp Anawana.  The camp also featured sports and dramatic arts programs.

After the summer camp program ended in 1992, the camp continued to be used by Kutsher’s Hotel as Club Anawana, offering water sports and beach activities.

Camp Anawana was sold along with the main hotel.  The old wooden buildings at the abandoned camp still remain, slowly falling apart.

Also see: Home – Welcome to Kutsher’s Documentary.

Note: Trespassing is illegal and permission should be sought from the owner, if possible, before entering on to private property.