This Place Was America’s Vacation Capital - Now It’s in Ruins-2

By the 1940s and 50s, some of the simple country cabins and guest houses serving the Jewish community had grown into sprawling resorts. They offered activities that catered to the entire family. Baseball, football, basketball, handball, horseback riding, hayrides, ringolivia, tag. We'd roll on the lawn, we'd roll down the hill in cardboard boxes. We'd have field day. We would do anything and everything, even when it was raining, we had a blast. It was for vacationers who spent the summer there, for middle class, working class, American Jews. This was eight weeks in paradise. Every man was a king, every woman was a queen. According to Peter, people would save throughout the year to be able to afford their summer vacation in the Catskills. The wives and children would spend the entire summer there, while the men would travel back and forth to New York City. My father came up on weekends. He'd get up on Thursday nights and all of Friday, Saturday, Sunday, until he went back to the city. It was fun and games for my dad and many people like him. At its mid-century peak, nearly a million guests visited the Borscht Belt each summer. There were over 500 hotels and around 1,500 bungalow colonies. By this time, many of the hotels had expanded their operations. The hotels transformed themselves post-World War II from this rusty country stuff to this country club. It's the time when the Concord built its city buildings, when you had indoor pools and air conditioning. Some of the hotels grew to be so large, they had their own airstrips and post offices. They had immense dining rooms that could seat thousands and massive indoor swimming pools. Summer fashions on parade beside a swimming pool mark the start of a winter festival weekend at Grossinger's. I remember going to that pool, standing at the shallow end, looking at two diving boards, a low one and a high one, and saying, my God, I can see Europe. Walking through the ruins of these resorts and country clubs, you can still see some evidence of their vibrant past. How many people sat in this chair over the years, or slept on this pillow, then woke up to enjoy some tennis, or skiing and ice skating in the winter? I imagine that all of the amenities are what attracted so many celebrities and high-profile guests. And now, I'm thrilled to present to you our present great champion, Rocky Marciano. Mrs. Grossinger, I want to thank you very much for having such a wonderful training camp. It really makes training a pleasure. It was the place to be prior to Las Vegas for the Glitterati. You would go to the Concord, and it was not unusual on a Saturday night to say, wow, there's Lucille Ball and Gary Morton, wow, there's the Rat Pack. It was the place to be. Part of the attraction was undoubtedly due to the many stages and nightclubs, which featured all sorts of entertainers. It was a proving grounds for performing artists of all genres, comedy, rock and roll shows. It's Concord's big superstar summer, all summer long. Now the superstar days of summer are gone. The stages are empty, and moss-covered floors have replaced lush carpeting. Even through the decay, you can see the scale and glimpses of the former grandeur of these hotels. The largest hotels like Grossinger's, Kutcher's, the Neville and others, were at the center of a unique cultural phenomenon, but one that wouldn't last. By the mid-1960s, the Borscht Belt hotels began to