The Grossinger Hotel

This once luxurious Catskills resort is now a haunting ruin.

Before air travel became ubiquitous, Grossinger’s Catskill Resort Hotel was attracting over 150,000 guests per year to its sprawling complex of 35 buildings, a golf course, beauty salon, pool, and even artificial ski slope. The 1972 death of its legendary hostess, Jennie Grossinger, though, coincided with the death of the hotel’s heyday as the rich and famous sought glamour elsewhere.

Grossinger’s started as a small family-run hotel in 1917 owned by Austrian immigrants Asher and Malke Grossinger. But it was under their daughter Jennie Grossinger that the resort boomed. It soon spread to over 35 buildings covering 1,200 acres including its own private airfield. The main building contained an enormous dining room capable of seating 1,300 guests; under the dining room there was a vast, cavernous nightclub called the “Terrace Room.” The resort was so prestigious that Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds were married there. After Jennie died in 1972, the resort started to fall into decline. With guests choosing to fly elsewhere for the summer, the hotel closed its doors for the last time in 1986.

Since then it has been left to gradually fall into ruin. The Commentary magazine review noted that “the feeling one gets everywhere … is of pleasantly solid permanence.” But like Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu, the pleasure palace of the 1950s has gently been reclaimed by the forests of the Catskills. The outdoor tennis courts and swimming pools lie abandoned. The ice rink, hotel rooms, and golf pro’s clubhouses are covered in moss and ivy. The indoor swimming pool has turned into a living greenhouse. Where once guests in the high spirits of summer vacations dove off the high board, dined, and danced the night away, there is now only the silence.

For decades, Grossinger’s was a byword in luxury. Over 150,000 people visited every year, entertained by the likes of Eddie Fisher, Jerry Lewis, and Milton Berle in the opulent nightclubs. The facilities were so state of the art and it was the first resort in the U.S. to offer artificial snow for year-round ski runs that Rocky Marciano used it as his training camp. The resort became the inspiration for Dirty Dancing.

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 stayed open until 2017, and has been kept maintained. The golf course clubhouse was demolished in July 2018. 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. The Concord Resort is part of the same deal. Demolition of the remaining buildings on the resort started in summer 2018. The last building at Grossinger's was demolished on October 19, 2018