The Borscht Belt Museum was buzzing this past weekend as the new exhibit opened after six months of work. The Saturday reception had the feel of a long-anticipated party. Local political figures and business folk mingled with out-of-towners, all drawn to the magic that was the Borscht Belt in its heyday.

The exhibit, which we’ve teased in prior articles, is a lavish, in-depth look at the way the Borscht Belt hotels and bungalow colonies started relationships, built romance, and assisted in courtships.

There were the “Mambo nights” of Latin dancing, the “flirtation walks” and singles weekends, which might lead to free honeymoons, and of course there were the swimming pools, where young people (and not so young!) put themselves on display poolside. The cause of many of these rituals of romance, as described by someone who was a kid back then observing it, was that “mothers and grandmothers were on the hunt for eligible bachelors for unwed daughters.”

Untold numbers of relationships began with meeting someone at one of the hotels, and wrapped into that were thousands of other stories, like that of Gina Simone’s mother, Lucille Pagliuca who joined a professional dance team and worked the Borscht Belt all the way to the Concord.

Lucille and Tony Mellusi star on a photo in the new exhibit where they are dancing during Champagne Hour at Young’s Gap hotel. Gina published her book Cha Cha in the Catskills, a collection of photographs she created in collaboration with Isaac Jeffries and @borschtbelthistoricalmarkers.

A bit of the flavor of the high culture in the Borscht Belt is tangible in the displays.

Dan Levin, who sits on the museum’s board, said that ladies left in the bungalows alone during the week sometimes had “Mambo instructor boyfriends from Monday to Thursday.” At the hotels, he added, when a particular waiter caught someone’s eye, she might leave her room key on her chair in the dining room.

Irving Cohen, maître d, at the Concord Hotel became known as “King Cupid” due to his matchmaking skills. He had a knack for seating the right boy next to the right girl.

“He put together hundreds, thousands of people,” Levin said.

Robin Kauffman, one of the founders and vice president of the museum said, “It was very moving to read a lot of this and to look at the memorabilia. That’s what we’re doing here preserving the memories.”

Kauffman noted that her parents had honeymooned at the Nevele. She met her husband at “a singles event at the Concord.”

Local documentarian Melody Gilbert found the party so full of friends that she had to work hard to see the exhibits.

“I thought it was really nice,” she said, “really well set up. So much fun brings people together, celebrating the history of the Borscht Belt… I love ‘story’ and there were so many love stories at the Borscht Belt. For me, it was a really good idea for an exhibition.”

Kauffman, too, enjoyed the party side of things.

“I thought it was lovely and it brought me a couple of surprises,” she said. “I met some people I hadn’t seen in a long time. There was a couple who I went to high school with… I think the exhibit stirred up memories for many people. Back then, well, if your family went to the Concord and you knew someone whose family went to the Nevele, you still shared the experience. The hotels and the bungalow colonies were like an Eden.”

The exhibit was curated and put together by Cristian Petru Panaite and McKensie Griffin.

Griffin told the Shawangunk Journal that they had worked on it from last November to the end of June. They pulled together all the text, formatted everything, and built each display. The work illustrates the complex but active way that Borscht Belt summers could impact on visitors’ lives. The impacts included lost innocence, of course, but also built memories that would last a lifetime.

Local visitors, like Jeff Kaplan, former mayor of Ellenville, were impressed. The sight of so many vintage photos and rare artifacts all brought together and displayed, set him back down memory lane.

“Everyone here worked at the hotels. It was the way we got into the workforce. I was the “Boat Boy” at the Tamarack Hotel. The boat was on the pond across the highway, and you got to it through a lonely tunnel. I wasn’t very busy as a result!”

Funding for the exhibit came in part from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature administered by Arts Mid-Hudson.

For more information go to www.borschtbeltmuseum.org.