Grossinger’s resort on a horrendously hot April afternoon. Open from the turn of the century to 1986, Grossinger’s was one of the three crown jewels of the Catskill resort area, known in its time as the Borscht Belt or Jewish Alps for the predominant nationality of its vacationers. These resorts were the reason the now-desolate route 17 expressway was built from New York to Binghamton, which once packed with bumper-to-bumper traffic every summer weekend. Now the resort towns sit boarded-up and depopulated, and those resorts that haven’t burned down yet remain abandoned and open to the elements.
25 years can do wonders on a place. Nearly everything was this moldy or more…
Sometimes with weirdly beautiful results like this rainbow bathroom!
This framework belongs to a never-built lobby and entrance to the resort. At the time of its closure in 1986, Grossingers was just beginning a campaign of extensive renovations, which ultimately ran it bankrupt, a victim of its own grandeur in a declining era.
The enormous grand ballroom. I could almost hear the jazz combo playing the night away on the stage.
No such luck for the dining room. One more winter and this is due to fold in on itself completely.
This space was even larger still, with no clear purpose. What was it?
There’s two spots at Grossingers everyone knows to visit: the lobby bar
and the indoor swimming pool. Built to full Olympic size, with space-age architecture, no expenses were spared here
Since the resort closed, the pool and its glass walls and ceiling have become a sort of terrarium, with a year-round ecosystem of ferns, mosses and birds thriving.
