In the decades between the 1920s and the 1950s, the more than 500 lavish hotels and resorts of the Borscht Belt, nestled in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains of southern New York, were a vacation paradise for Jewish families across New York City. Famous Jewish comedians would visit the resorts to hone their skills, including Rodney Dangerfield, Jerry Seinfeld, Jerry Lewis, and dozens more. World-class prize fighters including Muhammad Ali trained there. Writer and producer Eleanor Bergstein wrote the script for the classic film Dirty Dancing (1987) based on her childhood summers spent at Grossinger’s Resort.
As the decades passed and American culture changed, the families of New York City found other places to spend their summers, and one by one, the resorts’ guests checked out for the last time. Some resorts filed for bankruptcy and shut their doors, others closed for renovation projects to update their now aging and outdated facilities—projects that would never be completed.
Today, almost all of them lie in various states of decay, and some like Grossinger’s have been demolished entirely. Some have been reclaimed by various companies and organizations and turned into retreats or conference centers, but many more lay abandoned, shells of their former selves left ravaged by time and the elements. As ceilings collapsed, windows shattered, carpets molded and drywall rotted away, their only guests now were nesting pigeons and various groups of urban explorers.
In October of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic had the world on lockdown, I took a long weekend and drove nearly 6 hours to visit the Borscht Belt, camera in hand.
This is what I found.
