A series of photos have captured how old lodges and resorts featured on 1960s postcards turned into scenes of abandonment.
Photographer Pablo Iglesias Maurer visited different defunct locations in the Poconos and the Catskills to show how the once idyllic places had fallen into disrepair and decay.
According to an article he wrote on DCist, Maurer was inspired by a matchbook showing a pool at Penn Hills Lodge and Cottages in the Poconos resort with frolicking guests – but the abandoned lodge resembled nothing of what remained.
Over several weeks, the photographer traveled to four resorts: Penn Hills Lodge, the Homowack Lodge in the Catskills, Grossinger’s Catskill Resort Hotel, and an unidentified resort in the Poconos.
Scenes that once showed vacationers relaxing poolside, having fun at a bowling alley, and having a drink in the cocktail now show walls covered in graffiti, floors with thick layers of grime, and mangled furniture strewn about.
‘I trudged through an old resort in the Poconos last year, just a few months after a fire burned half the place down. In the postcard, a couple poses in front of a gazebo. Now, it’s just a pit in the ground. Time is a sink hole,’ he wrote on DCist.
The series, entitled Abandoned States, is meant to give viewers a sense of what these lodges were like back in their heyday.
Maurer wrote: Photos of abandonment tend to be a bit stylized, painting decay with a nostalgic brush. The postcards, too, have their own haze – the places were never as nice as they look. I often struggle to get the two images to line up, as well. But time blurs the difference, and brings everything into focus.’
An indoor swimming pool at Penn Hills Lodge and Cottages featured on the cover of a matchbook, and now (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, matchbook publisher unknown)
A discolored and abandoned lifeguard chair and pieces of wood are all that remains of this swimming lake at this Poconos resort (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, postcard published by H Rubenstein)
Grossinger’s outdoor pool was built in 1949 and at a cost of $400,000, or $5million in today’s market (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, postcard published by Bill Bard Associates)
The indoor pool at Grossinger’s in the Catskills, and now covered in graffiti (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, postcard published by Bill Bard Associates)
Another view of the indoor pool at Grossinger’s. The pool has sat vacant since the late ’90s and has fallen beyond repair (Photo by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, historical photo published by Bill Bard Associates)
Stairs lead down to an abandoned theater in the Poconos. The resort closed in the early ’90s (Photograph by Pablo Maurer/DCist, postcard published by Kardmasters)
A 1,200-capacity theater at an unnamed Poconos resort. The caption on the back of the postcard featuring the theater touted it as the ‘resort world’s most modern showplace’ (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, postcard published by Kardmaster Brochures)
A residential building at a Poconos resort sits in disrepair (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, postcard published by Kardmaster)
After a fire destroyed the main building at this resort in the Poconos, a replacement went up in the early ’70s (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, postcard by Kardmasters)
The postcard featuring the modernist structure read: ‘Ultra-modern building houses the dining room, cocktail lounge, lobbies and offices’ (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, postcard by Kardmaster Brochures)
Once covered in a carpet of brown, red, orange, and green, this floor of this defunct Poconos resort’s is covered in green moss (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, postcard published by Kardmasters)
The cocktail lounge of a now-defunct resort in the Poconos. The caption on the back reads: ‘Peaceful relaxation – healthful recreation’ (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, postcard published by Kardmaster Brochures)
Another view of the building shows how shrubbery and trees have overtaken the building completely (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, postcard by Kardmaster Brochures)
The four-lane Brunswick bowling alley at the Homowack Lodge, once part of the famed ‘Borscht Belt’. The resort closed in the mid-2000s (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, postcard published by Bill Bard Associates)
A lane attendant at the Homowack lodge in the Catskills (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, before image courtesy of the Catskills Institute at Brown University)
The Jenny G Wing, which opened in 1964, was among the last structures erected at Grossinger’s (Photograph by Pablo Iglesias Maurer/DCist, postcard published by Bill Bard and Associates)