The photos below are of what remains of one of the Borscht Belt resorts of yesteryear. The Nevele Grand Hotel.

What interests me most about places like this, and taking photos like these lies in contrasting the strange, oddly haunting thought of all the life that was lived there so many years ago against its current dilapidated state (life & death). From the happy vacationing families swimming, hiking, skiing, and sleeping there to the staff that cleaned, prepped and attended to the needs of those families. As I made my way around the buildings, especially by the pool areas, I imagined what it might have been like to have vacationed here with my family when the resort was at its peak. Those thoughts in mind then looking at the crumbling, busted out, burned down, graffiti riddled remnants of what was once such a grand and happy place for its visitors is moving in its way. A stark reminder that all things come to an end. Good, bad, or indifferent. Nothing lasts forever. It’s about unrelenting time and its fragile, fleeting nature. It’s about the joy of life, and the inevitable, unavoidable approach of death that comes for everyone, and everything at one point or another.

There were some moments of unease walking these grounds. A sudden loud, and hollow banging sound emanated from the round tower building whenever the wind blew and the beautiful backdrop of nature’s background tune was unceremoniously broken by that eerie clang. If you’re not careful, you might let your imagination run wild about who, or what lurks inside the buildings that still stand. Do you believe in ghosts? The collapsed, burned down buildings and surrounding areas appeared very much like the bombed out war zone scenes movies I’ve seen, like Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Full Metal Jacket’.

While the photos on this page aren’t meant to be strictly about the history of the place per-se, the following is a brief, therefore incomplete description of it for reference. *Historical information sourced from Wikipedia.

The “Borscht Belt” refers to a region of the northeast where there were many summer resorts and camps that catered to Jewish American vacationers, especially from New York City. The resorts were popular vacation destinations from about the 1920’s through the 1960s. Sometime around the late 1950s, many of the resorts began closing, and while most were shuttered permanently by the 1970s, some of the larger resorts remained open into the late 2010’s.

The Nevele Grand Hotel, founded by Charles Slutsky, opened in 1901 and closed in 2009. Fires in March 2024 and January 2025 destroyed some of the remaining buildings on the property.