I was just looking at a before and after picture of some resort areas, and I’m puzzled.
In: Other
Quite a few fancy resorts and hotels in the US didn’t accept Jewish guests or had weird restrictions on them. For instance, you might be able to eat at the restaurant but not swim in the pool. Groucho Marx was once told at a resort that he couldn’t swim in the pool because he was Jewish, and he said, “My daughter is half Jewish. Can she go in up to her navel?”
I’ve read the resorts in the “Borscht belt” were created in response to this. Jewish people wanted someplace they could actually go in the summer to get out of the heat, someplace where they were allowed to use all the facilities and would be treated with respect.
As race and religion-based restrictions on who could stay at resorts and hotels disappeared, travelers had more choices, which unfortunately took away some of the market for specialty resorts such as the ones in the Catskills.
(If I’m mistaken about any of this I’m open to being corrected, but this is what I’ve heard in the past.)
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