![]() By 1950 nearly 200,000 visitors were coming yearly and the menagerie had grown to 600 wild animals and 250 tame animals. The children born during the postwar baby boom loved one of the farm’s central conceits - a feeding area where families could mingle freely with tame animals and feed them crackers or milk from bottles dispensed from conveniently placed vending machines. The Catskill Mountains were a popular vacation destination, located close enough to New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania for a day trip. “Over 100 tame animals bottle raised, for you to pet and feed,” the advertising material exclaimed. Whatever the case may be, Lindemann's menagerie grew exponentially: a brochure in 1946 boasted that the Catskill Game Farm had bison, buffalo, yaks, llamas, alpacas, camels, antelopes, mountain lions, goats, and several exotic varieties of deer. To make it even more confusing, there's a sign from the park listing 1969 as their 30th season, which would make 1939 their opening year. Though (in what appears to be a common mistake) the farm is often listed as opening to the public in 1933, an interview in the Tucson Daily Citizen that I consider to be more reliable states that it was in 1945 that Lindemann first opened the property to paying guests because of the great demand to see his collection. By 1940, he was selling them to zoos and acquired more land for breeding in Catskill, New York. His father had taught zoology (among other subjects) subject in Germany, and it inspired Roland to stock his farm in Palenville, New York with different varieties of deer. The Catskill Game Farm began in 1933 as the hobby of a New York banker named Roland Lindemann. Redevelopment of the site is expected to be resort-related.The entrance to the former Catskill Game Farm, flanked by the silhouettes of the hand-painted giraffes that stood on either side when it was open In 2019, Sullivan Resorts LLC, a subsidiary of owner Louis Cappelli’s Valhalla-based Cappelli Enterprises, demolished most of the site. Efforts had been made in the past to bring the once regal hotel back to life. Many of the hotel rooms were still furnished, but graffiti covered the walls, ornate architectural nuances have been vandalized, pools have been destroyed and glass has been shattered. The resort closed in 1986 and has fallen into decay and ruin. Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds were married at Grossingers. Nelson Rockefeller and boxing champion Rocky Marciano (who trained there). Celebrity regulars included Eleanor Roosevelt, Gov. At its peak, and under the tutelage of matriarch Jennie Grossinger, the popular resort had a campus of 35 buildings, a wedding chapel, a ski slope, its own zip code, an air strip and a dining room that could feed 3,000 all at once. The famed hotel, which was as much the center of entertainment in the 1950s and 1960s as New York City, Hollywood or Las Vegas, now lies in ruins, a tawdry souvenir of its former showgirl self. Once the showplace of all Catskill resorts, Grossinger’s is nothing but a memory now. When you visit, stop by the village’s two historic hotel buildings: The 1842 American Hotel (1842) and the Roseboro Hotel, which operated as a hotel as far back as the 1850s. ![]() Today it is owned by a South Korean conglomerate with plans to renovate it in the future. As summertime clientele found tony Saratoga Springs (with its casino and racetrack) later in the century, the Adler and other hotels emptied and deteriorated. Sitting on a rise on the northern end of the village’s business district, the five-story tall Adler had 150 guest rooms, a ballroom, a massive dining room and beautiful manicured lawns. The Adler (1929-2004) was one of the most imposing. There were more than a dozen major hotels here, now almost all gone. While most of the summer residents were Jewish, others from around the world could also be found enjoying the fresh mountain air, taking in the medical mysteries of the villages several mineral springs and enjoying nationally known entertainers at dances and concerts. The village of Sharon Springs was once the vacation mecca for thousands of travelers in the beginning of the 20th century. ![]()
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