Lapidus cottages

The historical, now closed Lapidus Cottages in White Lake, New York, dating from 1938 to 1974, were located on Route 17B in the town of Bethel, near the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival. A traditional Borscht Belt New York City retreat, the campus was home to generations of summer residents migrating to the mountains each summer. It was most notable for playing an important role in the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969, when Lapidus residents offered fresh water, food and campsites to the throngs of concertgoers, many of whom would otherwise not had provisions and campsites.
Located approx from midtown Manhattan in the Catskill Mountains, the Town of Bethel, particularly the hamlets of White Lake and Kauneonga Lake, were an integral part of the Woodstock festival, inasmuch as these two towns served as the entire commercial market from which concertgoers could access food. It would be worth noting that aside from two country stores in the business of serving a small summer population, an ice cream stand, candy cone and a pizza shop, there were no other food outlets for concertgoers.
Lapidus Cottages were located at the intersection of Routes 17B and 55. It was route 17B that connected the New York State Thruway with the concert site in White Lake. While much has been written about the Town of Bethel relative to its prominence in the summer of 1969 and the town's role in the Woodstock Festival help there; there is a lot to learn from the community that made the destination for the festival possible.
Lapidus bungalows
Lapidus Cottages, a campus roughly in size, consisted of a series of approximately 150 wooden bungalows. Bungalows were a traditional building style throughout the Catskill region, dating back to the 1920s. A bungalow is a wooden structure, unheated, generally consisting of one or two bedrooms, a kitchen and bath. The structures had shingle roofs and were built above the ground, sitting on wooden 4x4 posts at the buildings' corners. The area between the structure and the dirt ground below was left open and served as a crawl space to service the plumbing.
Bungalows were quite comfortable inside with full-sized, fully-equipped kitchen and bathrooms. All interior rooms were full size with fully-finished walls and floors; these are more like standard homes than cabins. Often on chilly upstate New York mornings, residents would light the stove top burners and oven to warm the bungalow. The full size stove/ovens were propane fueled; the propane was supplied by a propane tank sitting outside each building.
The Ritz Theater
The Ritz Theater, a White Lake landmark movie theater, is said to have been brought to White Lake and the people of Bethel by Leon Lapidus, whose Lapidus Cottages stood directly opposite.

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