Hotel On The Hill

This secluded hotel holds a special place in my heart. It’s the genesis of my journey as an Urbexer. From the street, it seems like nothing more than an old, crumbling relic of the past. 

But it’s much more, it’s a sprawling jungle of hallways and guest rooms that seem to go on and on. While now it’s a heavily decayed husk of what it once was, if you look closely, you can find a memento from the past. From hotel stationary, office documents, room keys, and much more. Time will tell how much longer this structure has left to stand. Portions of the roof have already started to give way, and an alarming number of areas have collapsed. Mold has consumed the interior, every room, every wall, everything. In this stage, it’s difficult to draw comparisons or make inferences about areas of the hotel, there’s almost nothing left—just decay in the wake of mother nature and explorers. 

When I first entered the hotel through the indoor pool room window, I read a tag on the floor: “abandoned hope, all ye who enter here”, it read. That is a quote from “The Divine Comedy”. A work of poetry I have read before. The quote, however, is fitting for the situation, as there’s no hope for this hotel. It’s too far gone after nearly 2 decades of neglect. 

The pool itself is by far the most recognizable sign of the past, given only because the pool is still there. Thrown into it is everything imaginable: old pool chairs, cans and bottles, and countless old bottles of hydrochloric acid from storage. 

Further in the hotel, every hallway almost appears to be slanted. As if the building is sliding down the hill it’s rested on since the early 1900s. I stumbled across a room filled with old books written in Hebrew. I don’t speak Hebrew, so I can only assume they were copies of prayer books or something of the like. This hotel used to host camps and programs for Jewish people, right up until the fire that shuttered the hotel. 

The once-thriving resort was struck by a catastrophic fire in October 2000. The blaze consumed the lobby, the two-story office section, a conference room, the kitchen, and the vibrant nightclub, resulting in a poignant reminder of the hotel's past splendor. In an interview, the hotel's General Manager vowed to renovate the destroyed space and reopen. Time has proven that to be financially impossible.

Passing by, one can see the section of the hotel destroyed by the fire. You can also see that progress was made, and the section was completely cleared down to the frame of all debris from the fire. It's clear that reopening was the main goal. 25 years later, here it stands, abandoned. Because of that, all furniture was left inside, as it was never intended to be abandoned. This offers us a unique view of the past.