the heiden hotel

The Heiden Hotel was built in 1905 as a Catskills resort for vacationing families. It was a member of the “Borscht Belt,” a cluster of hotels in the Catskills area, largely Jewish and Kosher. Most of these hotels tried to be all-inclusive resorts, providing meals, entertainment, sports, and other activities.

These destinations were quite populat before the advent of cheap airfare and air conditioning- families from hotter regions would rent long-term space for the summer in the cooler mountains to escape the summer heat. Husbands would spent the work week at home and then rejoin the family for the weekend.

Families eventually began taking shorter vacations to farther away places, and suddenly the Borscht Belt was no longer able to compete. Hotels slowly began shuttering their doors in the 1970s, the ‘Prop Hotel’ included. Today only 5 operational hotels remain.

The Heiden Hotel was run as a small motel for a few years after the hotel’s official closing in the 1970s, up until about 1982. The kitchen was not in service, entertainment was not provided- only rooms for rent.

The Heiden Hotel was special in that it was the only hotel of the Catskills region to star in a movie. Other movies such as “Dirty Dancing” had been created about the region, but they had been filmed in other locations. 1987’s “Sweet Lorraine,” starring Maureen Stapleton and a very young Edie Falco brought a small part of Hollywood and limited fame to the shuttered hotel. All scenes for the movie were filmed on the grounds and inside of its walls.

On May 18 2008 a fire levelled what was left of the Heiden Hotel. The owners had spoken with the local fire department to find out the cost of tearing down the structure through use of fire a month prior to the suspicious fire.