Weekend, January 18-19, 2025 – Summers “in the mountains” was legendary

By admin

RALPH LAUREN’S 

CATSKILLS ROOTS

WEEKEND  JANUARY 18-19, 2025

ISSUE #1371

NEW YORK ALMANACK

Ralph Lauren’s Catskills Roots

January 16, 2025 by John Conway 

Fashion icon Ralph Lauren, who transformed a small necktie business into an international brand, joined elite company recently when he accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden.

Lauren, known for his “preppy threads,” but whose fashion empire extends to fragrance and furniture and beyond, said in a statement that it was an “honor of a lifetime.”

In bestowing the award, the White House cited Lauren’s philanthropy, “including fighting to end cancer as we know it,” and noted that “Ralph Lauren reminds us of our distinct style as a nation of dreamers and doers.”

And those who know their Sullivan County, New York, history know that in the case of Ralph Lauren, his own dreams started right there. That’s right, Ralph Lauren once lived and worked in Monticello.

Ralph Lifshitz, was born to Frank and Frieda Cutler Lifshitz on October 14, 1939, and grew up in the same Jewish neighborhood in The Bronx that produced Robert Klein, Penny and Garry Marshall, and rival designer Calvin Klein. His father made a living painting houses, and also dabbled in art, as well.

One of Lauren’s unauthorized biographers, Michael Gross, who wrote Genuine Authentic: The Real Life of Ralph Lauren in 2003, outlined the family’s strong connection to the Sullivan County’s Catskill mountains.

“The Lifshitz family had spent summers there for years,” Gross writes. “In the 1930s, Ralph’s uncle, Izzy Lifshitz, opened a produce store in Monticello and soon became a wholesaler, supplying fruits and vegetables to the many local summer camps and hotels. Eastern European immigrants had vacationed in the mountains since the turn of the century, converting farmhouses into boardinghouses, boardinghouses into hotels, and hotels into grand resorts like Grossinger’s, Kutsher’s, and the Concord.”

Several members of the Cutler family owned property there, too. One of Frieda’s brothers had a bungalow colony. Frank and Frieda had a kochalyn– a rooming house with a communal kitchen. Frank bought the Green Mountain House (aka Lifshitz Bungalows) but hated it because he had to commute every weekend while Frieda and the kids got to stay all summer.

“When he got there on Fridays, he’d be overwhelmed with repair and painting chores,” according to Gross. “The big white house atop a wooded rise had two bedrooms on its ground floor, three more upstairs, and two separate bungalows with five more bedrooms – every one with its own sink.

“Next door was the Hilltop Bungalow Colony, owned by the Pincus and Cohen families. All alone together on their hilltop, the two compounds were a world apart in the 1940s. ‘We were kept secluded and out of the mainstream,’ says a Cohen cousin, Barbara Levy. ‘We knew there was a war, but nobody talked about it.’

“They would all swim in the Hilltop’s unfiltered concrete pool, climb the apple trees, go berry picking, play punchball, sneak into the local hotels, and walk to the movies at the Rialto and Broadway in town.”

Frank Lifshitz used to frequent Gusar’s Pharmacy on Broadway in the village. He used to paint pictures and sell them outside, usually allowing drug store owner George Gusar to see them first.

One day during the summer of 1955, he asked Gusar if he might know where the two Lifshitz boys might find summer employment. Gusar hired them both.

“I don’t remember much about them,” he once related to a newspaper reporter. “They didn’t really stand out, but you have to realize, I’ve had a lot of people work for me over the years who went on to become famous, like George Cooke and Eddie Cooke.”

The boys – Ralph and his older brother Jerry – left the drugstore after a short time for jobs as waiters at Camp Roosevelt on Sackett Lake, where they worked for a number of summers thereafter. Their tenure there proved life changing.

“Camp Roosevelt opened up new possibilities for Ralph,” Gross writes. “It was his first real exposure to a world beyond the insular immigrant community his parents inhabited. Though most of the campers were middle class, some were rich – the children of hotel owners, real estate moguls, and newspaper distributors – and they were real preppies, not just dress-up wannabes.

“Their world, until then alien, suddenly seemed within his reach. ‘Even then,’ says one of Jerry’s campers, ‘Ralph knew where to mingle.’”

The Camp Roosevelt experience made a lasting impression on Ralph Lifshitz, and was largely responsible for instilling in him his renowned drive and insatiable ambition. As Gross points out, he became a sort of real life Jay Gatsby, “who sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.”

In keeping with this new image, he and his siblings legally changed their name to Lauren in the late 1950s, and the rest, as they say, is history, culminating in the nation’s highest civilian honor, whose previous winners include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President Ronald Reagan, Maya Angelou, and Mother Teresa.

Obviously, Ralph still “knows where to mingle.”

I wrote a few months ago about my relatives that were the owners of the Luzon Lodge, far from the later Catskill experience.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

No, it is not Sportspark!  This is the greatest feature on the MSC MIraviglia, the cruise ship I sailed on last week.  A great way to have basketball, soccer, tennis, pickleball while at sea. Keeping teens active this is the best attraction on board after unlimited food at the buffet.
(During really rough seas, the gym is closed for safety).

CREDITS

 NEW YORK ALMANACK
JUDITH BERDY

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

Copyright © 2024 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com