The Colonial Mansion - World Famous in Brooklyn

Recently I had found an old acquaintance on Linkedin who I had worked with at a Brooklyn Catering hall many years ago. This brought back a flood of memories. Many of the people I will write about are no longer with us. I can relate some of the lighter memories but will omit the many other more damaging stories out of respect to their memories (not that they deserve it) and to their families that are still around (that do deserve the respect).

The Colonial Mansion. It wasn't colonial (it was built in the 1930s). It wasn't a mansion. It was a  catering hall that was a world famous institution in Brooklyn. Nearly everybody in Brooklyn had attended a Bar Mitzvah or wedding at the Colonial Mansion in the 1950s and 1960s. In my family working at the Colonial Mansion was a rite of passage. Akin to the Sioux indians placing hooks through the skin and being dangled from trees. I was not related to the Feuerstein and Birnbaum families that owned the hall, but my Aunt Margie's husband, Seymour, was.

The Colonial Mansion was a kosher (just barely) business and the food was usually pretty good. In the 1950s they were known for their football weddings. A football wedding is one where the food platters are placed on a table and everyone threw the food to each other. Eventually the service demanded some refining and the parties became sit down affairs and served by waiters.

At their busiest they handled as many as ten parties a weekend in the three ballrooms. Aside from the decent food they were probably one of the cheapest halls in the city. They cut costs by paying staff poorly, reusing leftover food and watering down the liquor. My father, Harvey, worked there as the Gardé Manger (preparing the cold foods such as salads, deserts, fruit platters, fish platters, etc.) and was the kitchen manager  responsible for ordering food and hiring the per diem kitchen staff. At sixteen years of age I spent a summer working with him in the kitchen.

The Birnbaums were three brothers and a sister, Harvey, Sam, Irving and Blanche (whose married name was Feuerstein). The two older brothers eventually left the business and moved to Florida. The business was then operated solely by Irving and Blanche. Blanche's two sons, Bernie and Nate, were active in the running of the business. Irving's two son's who were talented musicians didn't really want anything to do with the business. Bernie was the most personable of the two Feuerstein brothers and handled much of the front end and schmoozed with the clientele. Bernie is actually mentioned in Sammy "the bull" Gravano's autobiography as a friend. Nate's main job was pouring the cheap liquor into the expensive liquor bottles and rearranging the plastic fern fronds that decorated the dais tables in the ball rooms. Both Bernie and Nate drank excessively and died relatively young most likely as a result from drinking.

After the summer in the kitchen, I started working as a waiter and stayed there nearly eleven years working as waiter, bartender and head waiter. Aside from the Jewish parties, the Colonial also catered many Italian weddings as well (where meat and dairy were served together -  not very kosher). When parties were booked the Jewish clientele were informed that tips were payable in advance and added to the cost of the contract. The Italian patrons were not advised of this, therefore, the Italians tipped but it was very rare that we received any from the Jewish parties. In the eleven years I had worked there, I must have worked between 2000 to 2100 parties. I have heard Hava Nagila and the Bunny Hop so many times I actually cringe just thinking about it (wait... I am cringing right now... Ok it's over lets move on). We started at nine in the morning Saturday and worked through to one AM (sometimes two AM) Sunday and back again at nine AM to twelve thirty AM Monday for a total of 26 to 28 hours. I came home with between one hundred ten and one hundred thirty dollars. That was less than five dollars an hour but we ate for free and got cigarettes gratis as well.

During the years working there I had met Neil Sedaka, Phil Donohue, Marlo Thomas, Tiny Tim, and Carlo Gambino. I never personally waited on Carlo Gambino but he was an excellent tipper and passed hundreds around. One lesson I had learned was that when someone says that he will take care of you at the end of the party if you keep the drinks coming he will sneak out before the end of the party and leave you with zilch. The tippers who will really tip will tip you at the beginning and at the end.

As I had mentioned before, my father made the cold food platters. At the end of the party he would throw all of the uneaten fruit on the platters into the garbage. One day Blanche walked in and saw my father throwing the food out and promptly went to Bernie and complained about the waste of food. Bernie came in and went through the garbage and pulled out the unused fruit. He told my father that he is to re-use the leftover fruit. The next day my father threw away the uneaten fruit again but this time included broken glass in the garbage as well. Bernie came in and was incensed at seeing the fruit in the garbage especially after the dressing down he gave him the previous day and went dumpster diving for the fruit again. This time he came up with fruit and shredded skin. Needless to say this was never an issue again.

There were two loveable characters that were employed as porters. Artie, a short black man who at times could be cantankerous and John who was hard of hearing and mumbled. Watching Artie and John was like watching Laurel and Hardy. On one occasion they came out with a ladder to replace some burnt out light bulbs on the marquis over the front entrance. Artie picks up the ladder, turns and inadvertently hits John in the head. After the stars subsided they set the ladder up and Artie climbed up as John held the ladder in place. Of course the next thing you know Artie is standing on John's fingers.

John calls up (mumbling) "Artie yer standin' on my fingers".

Artie hears John but doesn't actually understand what he is saying yells down, "Shut up".

"But Artie..."

"I said shut up fool".

"But ... "

"Just hold the damn ladder idiot!"

This went on for another five minutes. We yelled up to Artie but he ignored us as well. All we could do was laugh as John shrugged and winced in pain.

Nathan "Nate" Birnbaum was the sad sack of the Colonial. Nate's main job was to pour the cheap liquor into the expensive liquor bottles. He would spend hours in the back room like a chemist pouring solutions into beakers. A good portion of the liquor was probably consumed by Nate as well. In the eleven years I worked at the Colonial only one patron was able to tell that the scotch in the Chivas Regal bottle was not in fact Chivas.  

Nate's wife eventually left him and he had moved into a small, depressing apartment in Bensonhurst. He had no life outside of work to speak of but he had one possession that he had cherished. His Cadillac. One night after work Nate went to his car, sat down in it and passed away. He was in his mid to late fifties when he died.

The porters who worked late after everyone else went home swore that they saw Nate's ghost in the ballrooms re-arranging the plastic fern fronds on several occasions.

There have been many television exposés regarding what happens in restaurants and foods that are tampered with. The same happens in catering halls. I for one have never defiled the food that I served my customers no matter how irritating or insulting they may be. But I have seen co-workers spit in the salad dressing, urinate in a barrel of pickles and when a customer sent back a slab of prime rib that wasn't well enough one of the waiters would throw it on the floor and step on it before placing it back on the grill (you want shoe leather you'll get shoe leather). I understand why someone would want to do it but a little modicum of self control should take precedence.

I had mentioned earlier what I had learned about promises of tips. Here is a list of other things that I have learned from working at the Colonial and I am not stereotyping:

1. Teachers at parties get drunk and randy.

2. Masons and Knights of Pythias lodge brothers eat a lot and have no self control.
3. College students at their senior proms are oblivious.
4. One can actually burst their stomach at a buffet. Not a pleasant sight and requires immediate hospitalization.
5. Most people cannot tell expensive liquor from cheap.
6. Fights usually break out between families when Italian and Irish people wed. Most notably the groom angry at his new bride for putting cake on his face, shoved the entire top tier in her face and knocked her down. A fight ensued that went from the third floor to the second floor where a bar mitzvah was being celebrated. Someone went in and said "look at the fuckin' Jews" which resulted in a new group becoming embroiled in this fight. There was fighting all the way down to the basement and out into the street which resulted in the police getting involved in the festivities and a little old Iridh lady beating a police captain with her pocket book.
7. Minors should not drink. They puke a lot.
8.  Elderly people will put their left over chicken, salad and ice cream in the same doggie bag.
9. Becoming a pizza deliverer is a better career choice than working as a waiter in a kosher catering hall.
10. Cooking scrambled eggs in copper pans turn the eggs green.

As the Colonial was one of the cheapest catering halls they eventually started getting a lower class clientele. I remember my last day working there vividly. We had a party were everyone was nasty and difficult. The party was nearly over when an older patron had asked for more non-dairy creamer. The waiter that had the table was insulted and abused all night and refused to go back to that group. As the head waiter, I went to assist  and was very polite and accommodating. I brought a fresh pitcher of non-dairy creamer to the table when the guy grabbed it out of my hand thus causing the pitcher to fall and get on his clothes. The next thing I know the guy jumps up and is ready to fight.

A minute later I have twenty people coming at me. I retreated into the kitchen as the mob followed me in. I picked up a pot lid as a shield and a twelve inch butcher knife as weapons and brandished them proudly as a roman gladiator fighting a horde of Goths. Finally other people with cooler heads got their family members to go back to the ballroom. I walked downstairs, threw my jacket in the boss's face and said I was sick and tired of the shit they call customers and quit.

My father continued to work there for the next ten years working 60 to 70 hours a week. He worked there nearly 30 years and was let go at Christmas without a thank you, pension or any health benefits. Luckily he was able to start collecting social security and had coverage through my mom's retirement benefits. I have no regrets about working there. There are many good memories and I met many good people who went on to achieve wonderful things. Aside from a few celebrities I had also met a Shaolin priest working as a dish washer, Runyonesque characters who talked about the horses, Lieutenant's in the Columbo crime family and people straight out of a Dicken's novel (think Great Expectations and Oliver Twist). Most are gone and many I have enjoyed working with and wish that I could get in contact with again.

Shortly after my father retired the Colonial Mansion went out of business after fifty years of catering to the masses. The last time I was in Bath Beach the noted kosher catering hall was a Muslim Cultural Center. Another example of how the Jews and Muslims are linked from Abraham not only in scripture but in Brooklyn as well..