Remembering the Amazin' Mazer and a Return to Saratoga

Bill Mazer died last week. His funeral was Sunday. He was 92. A New York, mostly radio, personality, Mazer was part of Gilda's and my large sphere of associations. Mazer and his wife Dutch, really Dora but everyone called her Dutch, were members of our temple. Before Gilda returned to full time work she often would attend functions hosted by Dutch at the Mazer home in Scarsdale.

My link to Mazer goes back to the beginning of his tenure as the dean, perhaps the originator, of sports-talk radio. A Brooklyn native, Mazer returned to New York City in 1964 to host an afternoon sports show on WNBC-AM. My friends Jerry and Stanley were smitten with his broadcast. They became obsessed with getting on the air with him to ask a question that could stump his vast knowledge of sports, which hardly ever happened and for which he would become known as the Amazin’. I suggested we ask if he knew of Eddie Giacomin, at the time a minor league goaltender but soon to become a Hall of Fame netminder for the NY Rangers. We got through the screening. I asked my question which Mazer quickly devoured. That was 50 years ago. Wow.

We could not attend Mazer’s funeral. We were in Saratoga Springs, NY, for a nurse practitioners conference for Gilda. More than 50 years ago, 56 to be exact, Gilda moved from Saratoga to Brooklyn.

We spent four days in Saratoga where Gilda was born and lived her first eight years. Back then, her family owned a three-story home (with a basement that was a stop on the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves in the mid-19th century) and two hotels at the north end of Broadway, the Empire and the Brooklyn. In the early 1970s the city obtained the home and hotels through eminent domain. It built the City Center convention and conference hall and an adjoining hotel, now a Hilton, on the property. 

The conference was at the City Center and the Hilton, so we stayed at the hotel. Inside the City Center, Gilda noticed the original Hotel Brooklyn sign hanging on a wall. Saturday night we tried to eat at the Olde Bryan Inn on Maple Street at the rear of her family's former property, but a 90 minute wait—no reservations taken—defused that idea. A well known restaurant these days, the inn served as the hotels’ laundry during Gilda's years in Saratoga.

We've been to Saratoga many times, partly because Ellie attended Skidmore College there and for several years we attended an annual conference in the town produced by one of my magazine’s business partners, David Deutsch. 

This wasn't the first time we stayed at this hotel. About 10 years ago we spent a weekend there with our friends Linda and Jacob who had never been to Saratoga. We arrived around 7 pm. The hotel was sold out, but we had guaranteed reservations. As Linda registered for her room, however, the desk clerk apologized that the only accommodation available was a smoking room. She shrugged and accepted the room.

I overheard this exchange from my spot on the adjacent line. I expected similar treatment, only to be told the last available room they could give me was the 2,000-square foot presidential suite. Would that be okay? 

You could have driven a truck through Linda’s dropped jaw when she heard that. I felt a momentary tinge of guilt, but it quickly passed.

A Story Full of Irony

Here’s a story full of irony. But first, I'm indebted to Ken G for turning me on several months to a most interesting and educational web site http://jewishcurrents.org/jewdayo which delivers a daily recap, from a Jewish perspective, of four important events or people from that day in history. Regrettably, I don't always read the historical notes each day they appear in my email, which explains why I am behind with this blog entry from a missive from last week.

For last Wednesday, June 13, the Jewdayo message revolved around one of the first widely publicized anti-Semitic events in U.S. history. Seems a certain Judge Henry Hilton, in 1877, refused to allow a wealthy and politically influential banker and railroad investor, Joseph Seligman, to stay at the Grand Union Hotel he owned in Saratoga Springs, NY. As Jewdayo explained, “Hilton, a member of the Boss Tweed political machine, had a personal grudge with Seligman, who was a member of an anti-Tweed political faction—but the reason offered to Seligman for being denied a room in the hotel (where he had previously stayed several times) was that business was off because gentile customers did not like sharing the hotel with "Israelites," therefore all Jews were being barred from registering.”

In short order, signs proclaiming “No Jews or Dogs Admitted Here” sprouted up in many hotels across the country.

Here’s irony Number One: Though he shared the same name with Conrad Hilton, who wasn’t born until 1887, Judge Hilton was no relation to the famous hotelier.

Irony Number Two: Some 45 years after Judge Hilton died in 1899, the Grand Union was bought by a syndicate of Jewish investors, Tikvah Associates, Inc. of New York City. Gilda’s father, Irving Barasch, was president of Tikvah Associates. Irving’s family owned two hotels in Saratoga Springs, the Empire and the Brooklyn. Both served kosher food to their Jewish clientele.  But anti-Semitism still ran strong in the village. Within months, civic pressure forced Irving and his partners to sell the Grand Union. 

Irony Number Three: The Grand Union, at one time the world’s largest hotel, was demolished in 1952-3, replaced by (wait for it) .... a Grand Union supermarket. At one time one of the nation’s largest supermarket chains, Grand Union is now just 21 stores and is part of Tops Markets of Buffalo.

Irony Number Four: Conrad Hilton’s hotel chain eventually came to Saratoga. The Saratoga Hilton is at the north end of Broadway, exactly where the Empire and Brooklyn Hotels stood before they were taken by eminent domain in the early 1970s as part of Saratoga’s redevelopment. 

Irony Number Five: Wikipedia says In 1879 Judge Hilton bought a 1,500-acre estate named "Woodlawn" in Saratoga Springs. Following his death “the property was left to decay, and was auctioned off as eight parcels in 1916. A portion of Woodlawn is now the campus of Skidmore College.” Our daughter Ellie is a graduate of Skidmore College.