‘Dirty Dancing’ Hotel Fire Destroys Lodging Where Film Was Set

If seeing it was on your bucket list, the Dirty Dancing hotel fire may have put a kibosh on your ability to tick off all your boxes.

One of the biggest films of the 80’s was Dirty Dancing, catapulting the now-deceased Patrick Swayze to superstar status and making a name for co-star Jennifer Gray, who played the sheltered character Baby to Swayze’s Johnny. The film was a big sleeper hit, resonating with audiences across America and becoming the first movie ever to sell more than a million copies on VHS. (As an aside, could you imagine the handwringing that would occur if a movie called Dirty Dancing were to be popular among teens nowadays?)

Dirty Dancing was set in the Catskills (holla!), and recalled a more innocent America than even that of the 1980’s, which seems similarly innocent through a 2012 lens. The movie recalled the once prominent “borscht belt” of upstate New York, and its many resorts, with the film set in a fictional version of one of the region’s popular hotels, Kellerman’s.

There was no actual Kellerman’s resort, but several of Dirty Dancing‘s scenes were set at what was most recently the Grandview Palace condominiums on state Route 52 in Loch Sheldrake. The cabins were once the prominent Brown’s hotel, which served many New York City summer travelers in the Borscht Belt’s heyday. According to local news sources, residents displaced by the Dirty Dancing hotel fire were taken to the local Sullivan County Community College fieldhouse after the weekend blake, while firefighters continued to battle the flames. (Clip below.)