A building at the Grossinger’s Catskill Resort Hotel, which inspired the 1987 movie “Dirty Dancing,” was knocked down as a result of a massive fire on Tuesday evening, officials said.
The hotel, located in the Catskill mountains in Liberty, New York, is located about 90 minutes from New York City. It closed in 1986 due to financial difficulties.
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After receiving multiple calls, the Liberty Fire Department responded to the resort’s location to find a 3 1/2 story building on fire, according to a post on their Facebook account.
“Firefighters were additionally hampered due to the property being overgrown and concrete barriers on the roadway which prevented apparatus being able to quickly turn around,” Liberty Fire Chief Mark Johnstone said.
It took the department “several hours to bring the fire under control.”
“At the request of Town of Liberty Code Enforcement, an excavator was brought into the scene to knock down the structure once the fire was out,” Johnstone said. “The cause of the Fire is currently under investigation by the NYSP and Sullivan County Bureau of Fire.”
The Catskills hotel was once a prominent getaway spot for many Jewish families in the Catskills area known as the “Borscht Belt” during the post-World War II era and through the 1970s, according to Today. It also hosted a number of celebrities in the 1950s, from boxing champion Rocky Marciano to actor Debbie Reynolds.
“Dirty Dancing” Screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein has said in multiple interviews that she went to Grossinger’s while growing up. However, the actual scenes were filmed at locations in North Carolina and Virginia, not at Grossinger’s.