LIBERTY, NY: Grossinger's has everything for the type of person who likes to come to Grossinger's!
So went the motto of Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel, a lush weekend getaway just two hours northwest of the New York City. What began in 1914 as a tiny boarding house with no running water or electricity eventually grew into a 1,200-acre behemoth with its own landing strip and post office, before dying an inglorious death in the mid '80s. What's left of the resort—a set of rapidly decomposing hotel buildings and two mammoth swimming pools—has become a playground for urban explorers and graffiti artists alike.
The story of Grossinger's is a remarkable one, rich with enough "only in America" imagery to make Don King blush. Founded by a pair of Austrian Immigrants, Asher and Malke Grossinger, the resort was part of the "Borscht Belt," a once-expansive network of independently owned bungalows, resorts and summer camps that dotted the Catskills, catering primarily to the Jewish community in New York and beyond.
The Grossingers originally moved to the area in 1914, purchasing a small farmhouse with the intention of planting crops. The land, however, proved infertile; Asher and Malke were forced to make other arrangements, and so they began their career as hoteliers—with a single room in a converted farmhouse. In the summer of 1914 they had nine guests; the following year they had many, many more, as word had spread of their exceptional hospitality and cooking.
In 1919, the family purchased the land that Grossinger's currently sits on. The raised a small hotel, with running water and electricity. It expanded rapidly—in a time where Jews were still largely marginalized, they were warmly welcomed in the Borsch belt. The couple's daughter, Jennie, pushed the expansion. By the 1950s the resort had expanded to include a golf course, ski slope, swimming pool and theatre. In 1952, the resort became the first place in the world to use artificial snow on its ski slopes.
Grossinger's was a city in and of itself—eager to separate itself from Liberty's reputation as a haven for tuberculosis patients holed up in nearby sanatoriums, the resort requested and was given its own Post Office and city designation: Grossinger, NY. Guests passed their days lounging poolside, playing tennis, golf, jumping barrels, watching comedy or Broadway-style reviews. Jackie Mason, Buddy Hacket, Joan Rivers, Jerry Lewis all played Grossinger's. Rocky Marciano trained there, Jackie Robinson vacationed there, and Elizabeth Taylor wed there.
And Jennie Grossinger was in the middle of all of this, treating every single guest at the resort like family. With her charm, penchant for remembering names and faces and attention to detail, Jennie became a bit of a legend in the Catskills. Through sales of bonds, she raised millions during World War II, and a US Army aircraft was named in her honor. In Israel, a clinic and convalescent home bear her name.
By the time Jennie Grossinger passed in 1972, the resort's inevitable downfall had already begun. Air travel, once reserved for the wealthiest of Americans, was becoming increasingly accessible. One by one, the resorts of the Catskills, much like their counterparts in the nearby Poconos, were boarded up and shuttered. In 1986, Grossinger's 71-year fairy tale came to an end when the resort was sold to hotel and resort giant Servico. Grossinger's new owners originally intended on renovating the complex, but quickly discovered the cost of doing so far outweighed their potential windfall. The resort has since changed hands multiple times, passed down through a mess of bankruptcies and failed investments. It's current owner holds out hopes the ruins can be razed and turned into a casino.
Today, Grossinger's still has everything you're looking for—if what you're looking for is exquisite decay.
The drive there is is a beautiful, albeit sad, experience. State route 17 winds through the Catskills, past boarded up summer camps, through predominantly Orthodox Jewish communities and down near-abandoned main streets. Up a hill and past a guard shack plastered with "no trespassing" signs, Grossinger's appears on the horizon.
Much of the resort has been demolished; what's left has been thoroughly picked through over the years. The cabins and cottages that dot the grounds are unsafe to enter, their floors badly rotted, their roofs a deluge of splintered wood. Nobody is home at the Jennie J hotel, which has been thoroughly torn apart. Every bit of copper and steel plucked from its walls, every bathroom smashed apart.
The most well-preserved feature of Grossinger's is its cavernous indoor Natatorium, a mammoth structure that has somehow stood the test of time. Warm light filters through massive banks of improbably intact windowpanes (arranged in a rather Mondrian-esque fashion) and the roof, with its massive wooden beams and skylights, provides a constant trickle of water to the floors below it. Long after its last occupant toweled themselves off, this place has become a greenhouse. Moss covers walkways that once held banks of beach chairs, ferns sprouting up through cracked terra cotta tiles. Even in the dead of winter, the pool at Grossinger's is teeming with plant life. It is truly surreal.
The pool itself is remarkably well preserved. Its walls are covered with graffiti, but it's certainly structurally sound. You could spend hours staring into a sea of tiles before you found one missing. A tangled mess of floating lane markers—those blue and white floats so many of us clung to during a summer visit to the pool—linger in a small pool of stagnant water. A concrete diving platform extends over the deep end of the pool, its ladder shorn away long ago.
Outside of the Natatorium, tennis courts have turned forests. Just beyond them, you can see Grossinger's golf course, which is still in use today, its pristine fairways and perfectly manicured greens providing a bizarre backdrop to the devastation you walk through.
Probably the only other thing truly worth seeing is the hotel's lobby and ballroom. Though stripped of its wall coverings and fixtures, it still maintains some of its former glory, with its twin staircases, yawning fireplaces and checkerboard ceiling. Someone has broken an entry door from its hinges; the entire room is illuminated by the ghostly sliver of light that pours through the open doorway. At the other end of the room, the glass of a bay window has been spray painted. The rays of light that travel through it carry the warm reds and oranges of the medium they flow through.
It is a very sad place: You hear nothing other than the occasional groans and creaks of decomposition and ruin, and the occasional whir of a car driving by on the roads below the resort. It's hard to imagine the beehive of activity it used to be in its heyday, and even harder to imagine it ever coming to life again.
Pablo Maurer writes about soccer (as well as abandoned places) for DCist. You can follow more of his work at @MLSist on Twitter.
