Before & After - Grossinger's Resort, NY 1950s/2014

[mookster]

One of the main draws for me in my travels to America has been the Catskill Mountains area of upstate New York and it's many abandoned Jewish holiday resorts. I hope to cross a few more of them off my list on my next trip over but the one which always captured my imagination and the one I was very happy to see last year, Grossingers, is also one of the largest and most famous. Thirty years of decay hasn't been kind.

This is one part of 20th Century American society/history which absolutely fascinates me, the meteoric rise and mid-1980s fall of dozens of these resorts as cheap package holidays and cheap flights swamped the market.

Unfortunately I don't know the rough dates for the comparison images but most of them likely stem from the 1960s heyday.

The first comparison is Grossinger's most iconic area, the indoor swimming pool.

This second shot shows the Olympic sized outdoor pool. After the resort closed in 1986, the Cabana buildings and changing rooms were demolished.

This next pair shows an often overlooked area of the resort as it's separated from the main site by a road. This was the ski lodge, during the winter when it was snowy there was also a toboggan run down the slope. During the summer months Grossinger's became the first place in the USA to use artifical snow on it's slopes.

This pair shows the inside of the Tennis Lodge, located between the all-weather outdoor courts and the indoor courts which were accessed up the small staircase.

And whilst it's not a direct comparison as none of my photos show the perfect angle, this last pair shows the then recently constructed 'Jennie G' hotel building with what it looks like today. After closure in 1986 the two-storey walkways between it and the main complex were demolished.

I hope this provided some interest to you guys ​

 

[krela]

Definitely interesting, straight out of Dirty Dancing! Cheers mooks.

 

[uktogster]

Really enjoyed that mate, one of the nicest reports i've seen. EVER

 

[chrisw]

Fantastic!

 

[mookster]

The sad thing is, but for a twist of fate, Grossinger's may still have been around to this day. The resort was owned by the Grossinger family from the late 1800s, it opened originally as a small rooming house/hotel and was expanded massively in 1919 with the addition of a huge complex of mock-tudor buildings. During the 1950s a number of the original buildings were demolished including the original hotel/lobby building and the whole site was expanded once again when the resort business was booming. The family sold the site to a large resort chain in 1986, who closed the site down with the intention of remodelling, demolishing more of the buildings and expanding it massively once more (one of the buildings planned was a 200,000 square foot conference hall) but sadly, soon after seven of the buildings were demolished the money ran out, and since then it's passed from developer to developer and nobody has made a plan stick. The most recent application was for the demolition of the entire site and a new casino resort to be built on the land, but the site lost out in September last year to another application in a more populous location.

It's one of only a handful of sites I have visited which I have felt extremely personally drawn to, from seeing the first photos of the swimming pool years ago to actually physically standing in it last October, it was an amazing experience. The site may have been semi-demolished and ruined by catastrophic water damage and thirty years of abuse but it was one of my most favourite explores ever.

 

[King Al]

Superbly researched report this Mookster! I think its great how the ceilings in the pool and tennis lodge are largely intact and unchanged, it makes the dereliction more surreal.

 

[smiler]

Loved that Mook, Outstanding, Thanks

 

[B7TMW]

Fantastic. Love the last shot with the fir tree in the same original position. Well done on this one.

 

[HughieD]

Love the before and after thing. Very well done sir....

 

[ginger5092]

just brilliant

 

[BikinGlynn]

Yes agree great post, must of took an age to do!

 

[Richard Davies]

I remember seeing a feature on another site about The Pines resort which was in the same part of New York State.

This was another which struggled after the 1960s, & eventually closed in the 1990s.

I think much of it has been demolished.

 

[mookster]

I remember seeing a feature on another site about The Pines resort which was in the same part of New York State.

This was another which struggled after the 1960s, & eventually closed in the 1990s.

I think much of it has been demolished.

The Pines is demolished now, yes. Missed that one by not long. There were dozens of places dotted around the Catskills including many smaller hotels and the much larger holiday resorts. Not more than a couple of miles down the road from Grossingers is the location of the Brown's Resort, which had the hotel buildings converted into apartments before a huge fire destroyed most of the buildings - luckily everyone was evacuated safely. All that is left of the place now is the ballroom which miraculously survived the fire.

Kutscher's Country Club was the last of the massive resort complexes to close down a couple of years ago and is now almost totally demolished as well. A lot of the old hotels and smaller sites have been reused as summer camps for schoolkids as most of them have access to nearby lakes so it's a good way to keep the kids out of trouble during the summer I guess.

 

[flyboys90]

Really enjoyed this report,thanks for sharing.

 

[UrbanX]

Fantastic comparison shots! Top notch stuff as usual.