The abandoned Motel in Catskills, New York. Its fading ghost sign beckons you back to another era. The motel is located on the former site of the Lasso House, a popular boarding house, which was constructed in 1876 by Myers. Myers was born in Middletown in 1848 and moved to the mountains around 1864 to work with his uncle in the harness maker’s trade. Around 1876 Myers gave up the harness trade to purchase a farm just south of the village on which he built his popular boarding house. In 1898 the Lasso House advertised itself as being “among Shawangunk Mountains, beautifully situated on a high elevation; near the village; accommodates 50 people; pure spring water, bath and sanitary closets.” In other advertisements, highlights included “well ventilated; raise our own vegetables; good fishing; cottage located on summit of hill, overlooking valley; beautiful surroundings; abundant shade; good livery connected with house; convenient to post and telegraph offices; plenty of milk and eggs.” In 1892, the cost to stay at the Lasso House was $7 to $10 per week, with the transient rate at $1.50 per day.
Showing posts with label Hotel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hotel. Show all posts
February 28, 2021
The Motel (2018)
Around 1921 Myers sold the property, which was then resold many times over the years and eventually became home to the Lasso Motel. Although long abandoned, the 8-acre Lasso Motel property, along with two buildings with 43 motel rooms, was recently advertised for sale.
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November 29, 2013
AbandonedNY Featured on Weather.com
Haunting Images of Abandoned Resort

Urban explorer and photographer John Walker captured what remains of an old resort that was a summer-haven for garment workers in the early 1900s in his photo series called “The White Pines.”
Walker went to the resort, located on 750 acres of land at the base of the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, after a fellow urban explorer disclosed the location. In order to keep it protected, Walker doesn’t use the resort’s real name. He instead refers to it as “The White Pines.”
The resort was purchased by the Garment Workers’ Union in 1919 as a reasonably priced place for its members to vacation. In 1924, the property was sold to the General Executive Board of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. The union renovated the building and transformed it into a wonderland for the workers, according to Walker.
The resort featured a lake with plenty or watersports, a theater, a library and an abundance of activities to keep guests entertained. Now, the front desk, bar and theater at the resort all lie crumbling and derelict.
Walker’s favorite part of the abandoned resort is the theater. “The theater and main building interested me the most,” he explained to Weather.com. “Just seeing what time and Mother Nature has does to the location since it closed always makes it exciting to see and capture with a camera.”
The photographer, who is based out of New York, says he finds old hotels incredibly "interesting” and has photographed many abandoned summer resorts in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.
When Walker is shooting at an abandoned location, he prefers a little cloud cover to set the scene.
“Cloudy or overcast days I think make outside pictures more interesting to look at … gives them a moody feeling,” said Walker.
Go take a Look Weather.com
December 5, 2012
The White Pines
In Eighteen Ninety two an immigration agent for the Canadian Pacific Railroad,
bought 12,000 acres in the Pennsylvania Mountains and there built a lavish
summer resort hotel for German-speaking Jews. White Pines flourished until
World War I, when anti-German hysteria and pressure from the federal government
forced Owners to sell the resort.
The new
owners, however, were far from what the hotel’s opponents had hoped for, or
expected. In 1919 the new owners of the White Pines buildings sold 750
acres and a lake for $85,000 to Two Local Unions.
The Local
Union bought White Pines as a permanent home for its new program of worker
education and leisure activities that it first ran in a rented house in the
Catskills in the summer of 1919.
The
Locals bold experiment in running a worker resort near the summer homes of
millionaires, however, soon floundered. So in 1924, they sold the
property to the General Executive Board of the International Ladies' Garment Workers'
Union (ILGWU), the largest women’s union in the United States, which undertook
a series of major improvements that would transform the White Pines into a
"workers' play land."
Less
concerned about profits than with showing "labor in its proper light,"
the ILGWU renovated the main building, expanded the kitchen, built an amphitheater,
added new bungalows, and increased wages for its expanded staff, which included
on-site doctor, chef, and dietician. To make attendance affordable to
rank and file members, it charged minimal fees and, when necessary, financially
subsidized the operation.
Representing
"a promise of a better day and our ability to bring that day," The
White Pines thrived during the 1920s. Here, union members and their
families enjoyed a broad range of summer sports, dramatic performances,
concerts, and lectures on current events, economics, art and literature, and
social psychology presented by college professors, union leaders, and public
figures.
The
mostly-New Yorker staff grew to several dozen people over time, including
dining room servers, musicians, and a lifeguard. The ILGWU also rented the
facility out to other unions, which made The White Pines a getaway spot for the
larger labor movement.
The 1930s
and 1940s brought many changes to The White Pines. During the Great
Depression, thousands of women joined the ILGWU, and the American labor
movement enjoyed a new vitality and unprecedented legitimacy.
The ILGWU
also began to organize women garment workers in northeastern Pennsylvania’s
coal country, a region that since the early 1900s had become a haven for
non-union garment factories, called "runaways," where employers hired
coal miners' wives and daughters for meager wages.
The
federal government's closure of New Jersey's Atlantic City resorts during World
War II helped The White Pines turn a profit between 1942 and 1949. Buoyed
by the high blue-collar wages and strong union culture of the post-war economic
boom, The White Pines improved its facilities and added a rustic recreation
center called the Philadelphia Building.
After
World War II, The White Pines became the union showcase that its founders had
dreamed of. Noting the impressive facilities and programs for children
writing, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote after a visit in 1945, "You could not put
children in a more favorable environment." In the summers that followed,
some 10,000 visitors came each summer for vacations, retreats, forums, and
conferences, all of which featured activities designed to booster union solidarity,
including musical productions that featured union songs.
Urging
members to become well informed and politically active, Unity House also
offered numerous lectures, as well as books in its library, on social,
economic, and labor issues. To uphold union ideals, ILGWU allowed the Hotel and
Restaurant Workers to organize its staff in 1950 and also banned foreign-made
products from the gift shop.
In the
post-war era, The White Pines also expanded its mission beyond the
entertainment and education of its membership. In 1948, ILGWU president David
Dubinsky hosted an unprecedented weekend meeting for some 200 manufacturers,
which helped avert a strike. Other "employer weekends" soon followed.
Other unions also took advantage of the resort's impressive facilities for
their meetings, including the National Association of Letter Carriers and the
AFL-CIO.
In 1956, The
White Pines opened a new 1,200-seat lakeside theater modeled on Radio City
Music Hall, complete with a ninety-foot stage and up-to-date lighting and sound.
Performers on the new stage included comedians, opera companies, the Harlem
Dance Theater Group, and Radio City Music Hall entertainers
In the
1950s, the ILGWU could afford the subsided the operation. In 1953, for example,
78 percent of the guests were ILGWU members who paid a discounted rate.
By the 1960s, The White Pines, like neighboring resorts in Pike and Monroe
Counties, were struggling, as air travel, cruises, and suburban country clubs
offered vacationers many alternatives to the Poconos.
When the White
Pines administration building burnt down in 1969, the ILGWU replaced the
building and hoped that the proposed creation of the Delaware Water Gap
National Recreation Area would increase its appeal. In 1972, The White Pines
opened a new main building that began to host newcomers to the union, including
Hispanics, Asian Americans, and African Americans, who joined the aging Italian
and Jewish membership.
The
American garment industry, however, was experiencing serious decline as sewing
jobs moved overseas and ILGWU membership fell from its 1968 peak of 451,000 to
360,000 in the mid-1970s. By the late 1980s only 160,000 members remained.
Attempts to attract a younger crowd of members to The White Pines, with the
addition of "El Coco Loco" Lounge, did not help. In January
1990, faced with declining membership and annual subsidies of some $1,000,000,
the union reluctantly closed the resort.
In the
middle decades of the twentieth century The White Pines provided recreation,
instruction, and entertainment to thousands of ethnic, blue-collar, and
middle-class Americans. The White Pines had also effectively cultivated a
"union culture" that ensured loyalty and strengthened the ILGWU
during strikes and hard times.
August 29, 2012
Ski Bowl Lodge
Back in the 60’s This Hunter Mountain Hotel was known as O’Shea House and It was owned by Irish immigrants. Many families have spent fun and memorable summer vacations and winters days skiing the mountains while staying at this lodge.
Sometime later on it changed hands and was called Ski Bowl Lodge. The new owners got the name from the area that was called “Hunter Mountain Ski Bowl”
As of 2011 Ski Bowl lodge sits vacant and it’s future is uncertain.
August 27, 2012
Closed for The Season Resort
Lets take a tour of the 355-room resort that was being renovated in Upstate NY. The lobby, nearly finished, boasts a series of crystal chandeliers the size of four-door Hyundais. The centerpiece is a five-ton dragon boat sculpture of hand-carved jade from China. Boarded up for six years with a badly leaking roof, the former Hotel was in rough shape.
In the banquet hall the mold was this thick. The main kitchen where the roof had collapsed has been completely rebuilt and they had a crew of workers come in and acid wash the spray-painted graffiti from walls of the indoor swimming pool.
The New Owners say they've sunk $1.7 million of their own money into the property and they've applied for a $4.5 million mortgage to finish the job. They recently bought most of the nearly new furniture from the Pines Hotel in South Fallsburg. They bought furniture for 170 hotel rooms and convention seating for 4,000.
The New Owners are among the new investors in the changing Catskill resort industry. Once world-renowned as a luxurious getaway for Jewish vacationers from New York City, the region is slowly transforming into a more multi-cultural vacation spot. While the resorts are not abandoning their kosher clientele, many are reaching for new niches in the competitive resort and travel industry.
The new investors are hoping to recapture the allure of the "place in the country" where Eddie Fisher and Buddy Hackett once shared a stage at the Tamarack Lodge, where Muhammad Ali trained for legendary bouts with Joe Frazier at the Concord and where Lou Goldstein led thousands in wacky rounds of "Simon Sez" at Grossinger's.
But the changes are coming after some painful losses. The so-called "Borscht Belt" landmarks like the Browns, Grossinger's, and The Pines are closed and Abandoned.
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