Documenting the Bygone Borscht Belt

While outsized in Jewish memory, Borscht Belt-era resorts and bungalows have largely vanished from New York’s Catskills landscape—a loss documented by artist Marisa Scheinfeld in her popular 2016 photo book, The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland . The book featured Scheinfeld’s images of the ghostly ruins of hotels and resorts that she had explored during her Catskills childhood in the 1980’s.

Now Scheinfeld aims to further honor that history with the Borscht Belt Historical Marker Project. Beginning this summer and continuing over several years, Scheinfeld and her project colleague, Borscht Belt historian Louis Inghilterra, plan to install roughly a dozen signs documenting bygone Jewish landmarks. Financial support is coming from local municipalities