47 Comments Posted by susan

1980:
1) yes it was lovely wainscotting on the bottom half - lovely white as I recall.
2) light golden wallpaper on top half
3) ceiling and sprinkler system was freshly painted white & recently inspected (i made sure before I put my money down)
4) There was sunlight and cool cross breezes and music
5) It was not "in the middle of nowhere" if you could look past your millennial and x-gen stuck-up noses you could imagine a pre-1960 Catskill town flourishing or a post 2020 Catskill town coming back in a different way due to NY city sprawl. But oh ya I forgot ya'll would actually no imagination exvept the negative kind. Vision is not your thing.
You people are despicable the way you disrespect this place as if you have the right ! You never lived there. You never went during its heyday ! How dare you speak ill of it with distain ! How ignorant of you ! You have NO clue how much work the owners did or how they struggled by looking at the decay ! Of course the decay is bad ! ITS DECAYING ! The people who loved it are GONE ! Easy to throw stones at them now, dumbass !
Shame on you.

Yes. Thank you so much Mr. Photographer for not devulging MY personal information ! This was the exact simmer I lived there ! Allan Rubin and Barry Osten were not so lucky. Here's a newsflash to you ... 1980 was NOT a million years ago ! And we don' t want our stuff on thr internet for your entertainment !

Ohhh Jeeezus people ! Nooooh, nobody took that stuff down .... but somebody could have ! YOU could have ... but nobody did ! It decayed ! And no, its not worth a small fortune until somebody tresspasses, steals it, taking it down, polishes it up, and sells it on Etsy, shipping & handling not included - of course ! Wake up to reality people !

Of course ! God knows who snuck in there and did god knows what after the owners closed it up ! It was fine in 1980. Looked not pristien but clean & sufficient !

Its just decay.
Life is short

Jezus, you people watch too much TV ! Research the local economy ! You might find toward the end of the catskills heyday ... they had to make-do. Which meant using the leftover paint on hand ! Have you people no imagination to put yourself in other peoples shoes historically ? Or is your capacity for that so limuted thus the fascination with it ? Its a poorly painted wall people ! Due to owners struggling in economic hard times ! Jeez ! Duh !

I looked up the Heiden Hotel on the internet because I actually lived there for three months and wanted to know if I could recapture memories or find other people whom lived there at the same time. I knew it was a slim chance. I was surprised to find it on a website that showcased old places - loosely romantisizing the decay of man-made ventures. The authors made some attempt to give minimum historical facts and context . The comments were even more lacking ! They mostly refering to the decor in decay. Well, kudos Einsteins ! Decor WILL DECAY ! Anything on this earth will decay ! It's a natural phenominom. It's gonna happen ! Get over it ! Well, guess what ? LIFE also happened here ! Some pretty f'in good life ! I got a college art degree I can wipe my ass with. I suggest you get out there and LIVE LIFE ! Stop looking for decayed shit and LIVE ! We did . . . at the Heiden !

If walls could talk !

Summer of 1980 my room was the last one on the left with the fire escape outside the window. I waitressed at the Concord Resort that summer. Most of the busboys and waitresses rented rooms there. It was hard work but our off time at the Heiden was magic. We were all young and enjoying it. I remember friends like Valerie, Howie Alex, amongst many. Fun nights bar hopping and hot afternoons by the pool. Fond memories. Its sad to see it decayed. But you can't go back in time anyway.

My mother was in Western State in 1958.

But it was a great ride in it's day.

I'm not sure if it's the locations, or the age of the buildings, the fact that a number of them are in hospitals of some type, or coincidence, but I've been noticing on the stairs in a lot of these buildings, wide treads and low risers. (I notice stairs since as an amputee, stairs with steep inclines, high risers, are an absolute pain to climb. These look like ones that would not be a problem for me.)

That would have been a prosthetic from an above the knee amputee. (I'm a below knee myself). The socket would fit on the upper remaining limb, but the bottom part, below the knee, is basically a metal rod. Sometimes they have an outer shell on the bottom to make it more realistic, but not always.

It was probably left behind because the owner outgrew it. The residual limb (stump) changes over time. I still have my first two sockets, although I'm pretty sure neither would fit any more. Possibly the most recent one would do, but I wouldn't be able to walk on it much without serious blistering of my skin.

Sad, my grandfather passed away there in 1980.