Borscht Belt relic: Sculpture is salvaged from former Catskills hotel for future museum
THOMPSONVILLE — Workers used a crane on Friday to hoist onto a flatbed truck a heavy relic of the Borscht Belt heyday of the Catskills: a sculpture that stood for decades outside the former Schenk's Paramount Hotel.
The forgotten sculpture was salvaged by a group that hopes to open a museum about the region's storied history as a vacation paradise for Jewish families from New York City, who streamed to hundreds of resorts in the mountains each summer in the mid-20th century.
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The administrator of the summer camp that operates where Schenk's Paramount Hotel once stood agreed to give the concrete sculpture to the museum planners, who intend to have it cleaned and restored at a temporary location in front of a former train station on Route 52 in Ellenville.
The next stop would be their long-planned museum. Andrew Jacobs, one of the organizers, said Friday that his group plans to open the museum in Ellenville in the spring of 2023, and expects to announce the site in coming weeks.
The former Schenk's resort site is on Heiden Road in the town of Thompson in Sullivan County, just north of Monticello and less than three miles from the Resorts World Catskills casino. The property is now Camp Shalva, which is run by the Bobov Hasidic movement.
Marisa Scheinfeld, a photographer who captured the ragged remnants of the old Borscht Belt hotels and bungalows in a 2016 book, and metal sculptor Zac Max led the effort to rescue the sculpture from Schenk's.
This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Sculpture from former Catskills hotel is salvaged for future museum
