- Photographer Marisa Scheinfeld grew up in the "Borscht Belt," a ritzy Jewish resort haven in Southeastern New York.
- Many of the establishments have gone out of business and become abandoned buildings.
- Scheinfeld returned to the area to document what the resorts look like today.
In the first half of the 20th century, Jews were unwelcome at many resorts in the United States.
So beginning in the 1930s, middle class Jewish New Yorkers found a respite in rural Southeastern New York.
The so-called "Borscht Belt" — also known as the Jewish Alps and Solomon Country — was transformed by the Jewish community into a resort haven of their own.
Skiing, skating, swimming, and boating were all offered by the ritzy resorts. Little-known comedians including Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, and Joan Rivers all got their start doing stand-up comedy here. The community even inspired the film "Dirty Dancing."
In short, the Borscht Belt was booming.
But that all changed in the 1960s. Cheap air travel suddenly allowed a new generation to visit more exotic and warmer destinations. Grossinger's Resort, which once boasted 150,000 visitors annually and was known as the "Waldorf in the Catskills," abandoned its operations in 1986.
New York-based photographer Marisa Scheinfeld grew up in this community, vacationing in the Borscht Belt with her family every summer. She set out to capture the crumbling glamour of the once well-known destinations in a photography book called "The Borscht Belt."
"I truly feel there is a sense of a new life, a movement and presence in the photographs, and while bittersweet, and at times seemingly even apocalyptic, I think it’s phenomenal," Scheinfeld said in a statement. "While photographing a lot of these [hotels], I’d walk in and feel disturbed by the way they looked and their conditions. But I’d also be absorbed and amazed. There was a tragedy and awe going on at the same time."
Scheinfeld is giving book talks this summer in the Catskills and in Boston. A traveling exhibit of the photos from the book will also be displayed in 2020 at the New York State Museum in Albany, New York.
Keep reading to see what happens when glamorous resorts become eerie abandoned buildings.