Inspired by fair pay icon Lilly Ledbetter, James Lane Post has launched a series that will focus on female business leaders within the East End community, as a way to tell the stories of the obstacles they’ve faced and overcome, and to learn about the trails they continue to blaze in their own professional careers. Our first up in our series is Dede Gotthelf, the owner of Southampton Inn.
I began in an apartment in Manhattan during the era just slightly after Mrs Meisel. I too had an Aunt Rose with a sprawling West End Avenue apartment and a library of hand painted plates in the 20-volume Book of Knowledge.
My earliest memory of answering the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” was in the back of an Oldsmobile 98, driving down Fifth Avenue. It is possible that Aunt Rose was in front with my parents. I unhesitatingly responded “a bride.”
During elementary school, I read the New York Times every Sunday and loved furnishing the floor planned apartments in the real estate section. At that point I wanted to be an architect. My Upper East Side school, the all-girls Brearley School, mission was to prepare students to do everything. We learned how to speak Chaucerian English, Latin, sciences, and grammar, and were told over and over that ladies could go on to be and do anything we wanted. There were no limits to the female brain. I became a believer.
Forward to college. The applications included the requisite question: “Why do you want to attend?” For Williams College, which was just going co-ed that year, I took a black magic marker and wrote across the middle of page one: “After eight years in a single sex school, I want to attend a multi-sex college.” I was accepted.
And so it began. I was one of 10 women in my class the first year. We were housed in a “charming” historic elderly fixer-upper white house with a porch, stairs, bath tubs on legs and faucets with separate hot and cold taps. It was around a mile away from the assigned eating house — formerly known as “fraternity” which were banned along with the advent of women. These were the early years of assimilation of “girls” into the formerly “male” bastion of higher education.
During that first week I would ask directions to a building and would be pointed to the opposite end of campus. I sat in a u-shaped seminar where no “man” would take the seat on my left or right. The professor walked in with his giant dog and declared that: “this seminar is too big. There are 19 of you … plus her.”
I was asked by admissions to take a group of “girl” applicants on a campus tour. Each pre-selected dorm room was opened by a naked student … in front of all those young applicants and their parents. The pranks were almost endless. The support was not yet in place. And the determination to be anything I wanted was heightened by the experience.
Fast forward to senior year in college. There were dozens of recruiters on campus seeking to interview well-educated Williams graduates. I had hoped to be in advertising or publishing. The interviews were with banks, electric companies, and insurance firms. Chase Manhattan Bank offered $200 per year more than Citibank so I accepted that offer and entered the Global Credit Training Program with 200 mostly single trainees between 20 and 30 years old, studying together to learn banking and finance.
I believe there were around 15 women. Towards the end of the six months we were asked to provide preferences for assignments. I spoke fluent French and asked for Paris. However, there was a “girl” in France who didn’t do well so that wouldn’t be possible. I opted for six more months of training and entered the Real Estate Department construction lending group — to come full circle back to furnishing the New York Times floorplans from my youth.
One particularly scary moment was getting off a plane in Georgia to complete a foreclosure on a strip shopping center. There were men with trucks and guns waiting for the Chase banker to step off that plane. I did … and they were still waiting for the banker. I ran into airport, picked up the rental car, and headed out. The men with guns were still waiting for that banker. I have to say, there are some positive things about being a female banker.
After banking, I went on to bureaucrat, broker, builder, and then …hotelier. It has been, and continues to be, a journey. Certainly had not been planned nor pre-ordained.
Half of the Chase real estate department went to the New York State Urban Development Corp to oversee a $1 billion portfolio of urban renewal projects. To gather enough monies to buy a co-op, a car, and a cat, I left government to become Director of Investment Sales at Julien Studley Inc.
From Studley, I was offered the job from heaven, to start a New York City office for a Washington D.C. developer. But with the Washingtonian on the verge of bankruptcy, we separated the projects, and I started Catcove Group Limited. Since the late 1980s, Catcove has morphed into Catcove South Cove Corp, a waterfront building at Battery Park City; Catsheep Corp, a redevelopment in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn; Riverside Catwalk, Southampton Catcove, Catcove Corp, and then some.
It was an historic movement, a swelling of sentiment and confidence that women could do anything they set their minds to. Even banking, finance, construction, real estate development, hotel management.
What drew me to the hospitality business? I have to admit that most of this was random. Hospitality was as result of a local broker who asked me to put together an offering plan for the Southampton Inn and its adjacent International Plaza commercial complex. I did. And then received an acceptance letter for my then four-year old to go to kindergarten. Thinking both children would be in school daily, I decided to make an offer. The offer was accepted with a small down payment and a big handshake. The rest is history.
From a short term fix-and-flip initial concept, to 23 years at the helm of the 90 room Southampton Inn with its gardens, lawns, pool, tennis, conference, banquet, and dining facilities, and three buildings of commercial and retail on an adjacent parcel, life pivoted from Manhattan to a rural lifestyle on the Eastern End of Long Island.
As of this moment, there are plans pending for expanding the inn to 140 units with one- and two-bedroom high-end luxury suites with kitchens and private balconies and porches, some overlooking an Olympic lap pool. Approvals for this are pending. I believe it is my civic duty to assist with housing in the community. With experience and perhaps capability, I do hope to be able to ameliorate some of the housing crisis. Even if just a small bit.
For female entrepreneurs, my recommendation is to follow your passion. Be sure to begin with the economics. Finance and banking proved invaluable in meandering down my career path. And never be afraid to pivot. Life tends to throw things at us. Try to catch the ones that inspire you. They likely can be caught and steered.