June 16: Jennie Grossinger

[caption id=“attachment_10625” align=“alignright” width=“218” caption=“Jennie Grossinger with Eddie Fisher and Duke Ellington”][/caption]

Jennie Grossinger, the creator (with her parents) of Grossinger’s Hotel in the Catskill Mountains of New York, was born in Austria on this date in 1892. The land on which Grossinger’s rose was bought by her father as a farm, to let him escape the sweatshops, but it was Jennie’s idea to take in boarders and vacationers, whom she and her mother Malke attracted with their good kosher kitchen and their charm. By 1919 they sold their farmhouse and purchased a hotel in Liberty, New York, which grew into a fancy Borscht Belt resort that featured top entertainers and also served as a training camp for champion boxers like Barney Ross and Rocky Marciano. In the early 1960s, before the walls of segregation had truly fallen, Grossinger’s welcomed African-Americans and invited celebrities such as Jackie Robinson and Ralph Bunche to broadcast that fact. By the time Jennie Grossinger retired in 1964, the resort had 1,200 acres, 35 buildings, 600 guest rooms, an Olympic-sized pool, a golf course, tennis courts, a riding academy, an airport, a ski slope, its own post office, and 150,000 guests per year. Grossinger’s closed in 1986.

“The best-known hotelkeeper in America.” —Notable American Women