I wrote this history of Stier’s Hotel for the Borscht Belt Historical Marker Project. The project dedicated a historical marker for the hotels in Ferndale, New York in June of 2026. An earlier version of this piece can on the project’s website.
Stier’s Hotel was started by Frank Stier and his father Moses Wolf Stier in 1920, 8 years after they arrived in New York from the village of Mihova in the province of Bukovina, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now in northwest Ukraine. Frank had taken a short vacation in the Catskills at one of the farms turned boarding houses created by other recent immigrants to New York. Worried about how working as a presser in a sweatshop was harming the health of his father, Frank was determined to do the same thing. Moses and Frank raised $500 from family members and friends and went looking for a property.
Frank traveled to the mountains and put a deposit down on a farm in Jeffersonville. But on the way back to the train station in Liberty, he passed another farm at the top of a hill where Swan Lake Road crossed Ferndale-Loomis Road. He stopped, took a walk around it, and thought it was beautiful, and nicer than the other one. He headed back to Jeffersonville to retrieve his deposit and put it on the farm in Ferndale.
So Moses Wolf Stier, his wife Goldie Sussman Stier and their children—Becky and her husband Sam Meyer, Frank, Ben, Dora, Florence, Phil, and Claire—moved to the mountains. A few years later Sarah Steinbrecher married Frank and joined the business. Minnie Kanter, who married Ben Stier, was the sister of Al Kanter who with Sam Cohen (whose wife Becky also came from Mihova) started a nearby hotel called the Kanco.
The family struggled early as farmers. There was another Frank, known to the family as Frank the farmer, who helped them. They had some horses and a wagon that took them into Liberty in the summer and a sled that did so in winter. They had iceboxes that were cooled by real ice. They had some cows that later in life Frank Stier remembered being afraid of milking. And they had wonderful Stayman-Winesap apples from the orchard that made up much of the property.
Like other Jews who had moved to the mountains, they quickly realized that they were better suited for hospitality than farming. Becky Meyer was the first chef. Her husband, Sam Meyer, picked guests up from the railroad station in a horse and buggy. More importantly, he was a carpenter who built the new huge kitchen with a meat side and dairy side, another wing on the main building, the new Redwood cottage, and a playhouse across the street, where entertainers started to appear. The family called it the “casino.” (Later in the 1930s it did have slot machines that mysteriously disappeared whenever the police came to look for them.)
By 1930, Stier’s Hotel had expanded with three new cottages, the Spruce and Maple and what became known as the Horseshoe. (The latter two were originally built for the family but were turned over to guests and staff members, respectively.) The family had adopted the steering wheel logo that was the brainchild of Phil Stier and had created their first multi-page brochure. They had also constructed the first swimming pool in Ferndale, a pool so big that it stayed crisply cool all summer long. Over the next few years, they added a tennis court, baseball diamond, and combined basketball and squash court.
The Depression was hard for Stier’s Hotel, and like others, the family borrowed from some dubious sources to stay in business. But they survived.
Moses Wolf Stier died in 1942 and the tag line under the logo changed from M. W. Stier and sons to M. W. Stier’s sons. Frank Stier and his son J. Lawrence (Larry) took over running the hotel. Frank and Sarah’s other son, J. Harold (Hesh), later joined the Cooperative Insurance Company where Frank served as a director for sixty-five years. Frank had also been instrumental in starting a credit union associated with the insurance company after he had seen an “old lady turned down for a loan” at a local bank.
The rest of the M. W. and Goldie Stier’s family were bought out of the business. Claire (Stier) Murray and her husband, the comedian-straight man Al Murray, took over the Shelburne Hotel down the road. Others moved closer to New York to work and live. But the extended Stier and Steinbrecher families kept returning to the hotel on both Passover and Rosh Hashanah and on other occasions until it closed.
The postwar years were a time of prosperity—Larry used to say it was the only time the hotel really made money. It helped that Larry brought updated business practices—such as a standard rate schedule—to the business. In 1951 Larry’s new wife, Dorothy (Dottie) Stier, joined the hotel, helping Sarah in the front office and eventually taking charge of it and of reservations, payroll, and the delicate task of figuring out who should sit with whom in the dining room. The main building was renovated in the 50s Catskills style with knotty pine wall boards and big picture windows, and the Rose and Oak cottages were built with private and semi-private baths.
Over the years, many family members worked at the hotel. Becky and Sam Meyer’s son Aaron was a bellhop and, as the first in the family to buy a car, chauffeured guests to and from the train. His sister Shirley worked in the office before marrying Henry Rosen. Steinbrecher relatives worked at the hotel as well, including Sarah Stier’s nephew Larry Weininger who was a bellhop for a few years. Bernie Stier, the son of Frank’s first cousin Julius, worked in the dining room as did Ben and Minnie Stier’s son Shel Schenkler. Shel’s sister Susan worked in the office for many years and was joined by Hesh Stier’s daughter Barbara and Larry Stier’s daughter Nancy. Larry and Dottie’s son Marc started running the small concession when he was 11 and worked as a pool boy, bellhop, and handyman and then, when Frank was injured in 1972, took over his role managing the kitchen.
The family celebrated as well as worked at the hotel. Over the years many weddings and bar mitzvahs were held at the hotel, including those of many family members.
By the 1950s guest families would include two or even three generations, and the hotel built a camp house and could fit thirty kids in the children’s dining room. Being a waiter in that room was the most dangerous job at the hotel.
As at other hotels, entertainment had become more and more important to the guests. Many stars such as Myron Cohen and Henny Youngman played at Stier’s, often before or after their main show at one of the bigger resorts. The noted comedian Larry Best started his career at Stier’s and Terry Gibbs played the piano as well as vibraphone before he became a famous jazz musician on the vibes. Lenny Bruce and Buddy Hackett worked at the hotel but Frank thought they were both too “dirty” to be offered a second date.
The food, however, was the biggest draw. Under Frank Stier’s exacting attention, the hotel’s reputation for great kosher food traveled far. He hired and kept an excellent kitchen staff including chefs George Pitso and Eddie Jackson and bakers Steve, Alec Nagy, and Harry Starr and the salad man Eddie Collins. When a comedian talked to Johnny Carson about starting his career at Stier’s Hotel, Carson reportedly replied, “That’s the place with great food.”
The dining room was staffed mostly by Jewish young men and a few women. Black men later joined them. One guest did complain when Marc’s Black friend Ivan Richards became the lifeguard. Larry Stier told the guest he had three options: he could find another hotel; he could agree to be rescued if necessary by a Black lifeguard; or he could just instruct Ivan to ignore any trouble that involved him in the pool.
The hotel continued to do well in the early sixties. The high-end Birch and New Redwood cottages were built. The hotel reached about 95 rooms and could hold up to 145 people in the expanded dining room.
And then, in a few years, the clientele changed. The original guests, many of whom had come back for thirty years or more, kept coming. But as antisemitism declined and their income levels increased, their children were more likely to travel the country or fly to Europe, while their grandchildren went to sleepaway camps in the mountains. Even Larry and Dottie’s children Marc and Nancy went to camp for a few summers.
Dottie Stier had taken over much of the day-to-day management of the hotel as Larry’s busy law practice and community commitments took much of his time. (He was a local judge and volunteered with the Catskill Regional Hospital and Congregation Ahavath Israel.) When employees were unable to work, however, Larry would come work meals as a salad man or once or twice to wash dishes with Marc.
In 1971, as they started to open for Passover, typically the most remunerative weeks of the year, the family discovered that a former handyman had broken in and stolen the copper pipes in the kitchen. They had to cancel reservations for a full house and never opened for Passover again.
Although summers still sold out, Larry and Dottie could see that the business was literally dying, and they were eager to give up the burden of running it. The hotel was sold and its last guests, including many family members, left for the last time after the High Holidays in 1973.