GWL-1920s

Celebrity Visitors

By the time the village was incorporated in 1924, Greenwood Lake’s beauty, seclusion, and proximity to New York City—attributes that still hold true today—made it a popular vacation spot. The railroad and the steamboats faded away, and the Great Depression’s Works Progress Administration helped build more roads to accommodate burgeoning automobile travel. Those roads brought celebrities who vacationed at the Lake, like Greta Garbo, Gypsy Rose Lee, and legendary baseball slammer Babe Ruth. Ruth was a frequent visitor from the late 1930s until his death in 1948. Local hotels were his stay of choice before he regularly rented a cottage at Greck’s Maplewood Inn, run by Doris “Granny” Greck. Like most guests at the lake, Ruth would gamble, drink with friends at the many watering holes, and cruise the lake in a custom-built mahogany boat. Greck’s was a restaurant by the time Doris’ great-granddaughter Jackie Lowenberg grew up there, long after Ruth passed away, but Doris still ran a tight ship. “Granny had a personality that definitely wasn’t for the faint of heart,” Lowenberg says, “or the sensitive types.”

Source: https://www.chronogram.com/hv-towns/greenwood-lake-the-liquid-playground-turns-100-19299566?fbclid=IwAR0uWnCMapY8zl7wEOTFezh1UvJM2wRueZX3Xd_zaglNQfFpdPymD_DU8yY