Helen Kutsher Dies At Age 89

Helen Kutsher of ‘Borscht Belt’ resort died Tuesday in a hospital in Philadelphia. She was 89.

Kutsher’s Hotel and Country Club in Monticello, New York, is the longest running of the Borscht Belt grand resorts (in the Catskill Mountains area of New York State). While the region was open to any and all visitors, the Borscht Belt was so named due to the largely Jewish-American clientele that made the Catskills the primary vacation destination for Jews in the Northeastern United States.

Max and Louis Kutsher started the Kutsher’s Brothers Farm House in 1907 and began expanding in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1940s, at the request of his aunt Rebecca, Milton Kutsher took over the hotel. He oversaw the hotel’s significant expansion in the 1950s – 1980s that created a premiere Catskills vacation destination – a “1,500 acre property that included a 400-room resort, condos, two bungalow colonies, two summer camps, a 18-hole golf course and lakefront.” Milton Kutsher and his wife Helen (nee Wasser), ran the hotel side-by-side, with Helen serving as the head of reservations and doyenne of the resort. The two ran the hotel until Milton’s death in 1998, at which point, his son Mark took over management of the hotel, along with Helen, who continued to greet guests daily into the 2000s.

Helen Kutsher’s funeral is Thursday in Monticello.