Grossinger's Hotel & Resort, USA Oct 2014

So here we are, the final chapter in my American urbex adventure.

When I first started planning my trip in December 2013 I was browsing around for places to see and one place immediately caught my eye - Grossinger's Resort, in the middle of the Catskill Mountains area of New York. The photo of the iconic indoor swimming pool captivated me and from that moment I knew I simply had to see it. As the plans progressed I found someone who could make it happen and all was set, until a week before the day we were due to go and the matey with transport pulled out. So I hastily managed to reorganise it and we ended up getting a bus to a town in the middle of nowhere, with a real back-woods feel and began the mile-long walk to the resort. Before long we could see the famous high-rise accomodation block 'Jennie G', named after Jennie Grossinger one of the resort's founders. With the sounds of us trampling through the trees towards the site drowned out by some noisy roadworks on a nearby bridge we were in undisturbed. I couldn't believe I was finally stood in somewhere I had dreamed about seeing for so long. Even in it's massively trashed state, I was elated.

A bit of background to the location...

Asher Selig Grossinger moved from New York City to Ferndale in Sullivan County in the Catskill Mountains in the 1900s. There he rented rooms to visitors from New York City. His wife, Malke, operated the kosher kitchen, and Jennie Grossinger (1891–1972), his daughter, was the hostess. They called their home Longbrook House. In 1919, they sold it and purchased a bigger house on 100 acres (0.40 km2), calling it Grossinger's Terrace Hill House.

In 1952, Grossinger's earned a place in the history of skiing as the first resort in the world to use artificial snow. By the time Jennie died in 1972, the hotel had grown to 35 buildings on 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) that served 150,000 guests a year. It had its own airstrip and post office. During his fighting days Rocky Marciano would train at the resort. But in the late 1970s and 1980s, resorts like Grossinger's or the Concord could no longer attract younger guests.

In August 1984, Grossinger’s, in its dying years, promoted a Woodstock weekend to mark the 15th anniversary of the festival. It featured a workshop in tie-dyeing, a musical performance by David-Clayton Thomas, formerly of Blood, Sweat & Tears, a midnight showing of the four-hour documentary "Woodstock," and an appearance by John Sebastian, who advised, "Don't eat the purple tzimmes." Abbie Hoffman, who was thrown off the Woodstock stage by Pete Townshend of The Who for making a political speech, was brought in by Grossinger’s for the promotion.

In 1986, the Grossinger descendants sold the property to Servico. Grossinger's main hotel and main resort areas closed in 1986, but the golf course is still open as of 2014. The members of the golf clubhouse call the course "Big G". Servico failed to reopen the hotel due to the massive costs associated with it. Numerous other companies also failed the same feat. It is owned by Louis Cappelli as of September 2013, who is hoping for casinos to come to the area.

Click to expand...

Almost as soon as it closed in 1986, Servico set about the demolition of eight of the buildings in preparation for the planned remodelling/redevelopment that never happened. These included the Playhouse, the Conference Centre, a few of the accomodation buildings, buildings around the Olympic-sized outdoor pool and the original main entrance lobby building. Currently nearly thirty years later the majority of the buildings are in a terrible state, the water damage is the worst I have ever seen on any explore anywhere, most of the buildings were constructed with mainly wooden floors of which many are collapsed or too weak to walk on any more. Still the site is massive, we spent five hours there and saw pretty much everything we could working our way around the areas too unsafe to walk through. In one building that doesn't seem to get much attention as from the outside its a pretty non-descript bland thing we found a room full to the brim with boxes and boxes of Grossinger's stationery, luggage tags, brand new logbooks and receipt books still wrapped in cellophane and a draw full of the promotional booklets produced by Servico publicising the renovation and new buildings that were going to be built from 1986 onwards which was really rather poignant as it never happened - so many 'what if?'s....

The Catskills area is littered with abandoned Jewish resorts and other such buildings but Grossinger's is the largest and most iconic ruin of a bygone holiday era. In the month before my visit, Louis Capelli's plan for a casino to be built where Grossinger's currently stands was rejected in favour of another location so for now at least the buildings on the massive site will continue to slowly fall down.

















The Jennie G, the walkway between the main buildings and itself was demolished in 1986.

































Big thanks for following all my adventures from America, I can't wait to go back as there is so much left to see.

Many more photos from Grossinger's here https://www.flickr.com/photos/mookie427/sets/72157649180368615/ ​