Digital Reconstruction of a Demolished Landmark
About the Project
This project investigates digital reconstruction as a tool for historic preservation through the modeling of a demolished building using contemporary architectural software. The focus is the former indoor pool building at Grossinger’s Catskills Resort in upstate New York, a mid-century modern structure that was abandoned for decades and ultimately demolished in 2018. Once part of the Borscht Belt—a resort region that flourished from the 1920s through the 1990s—the building represents a largely lost architectural and cultural landscape.
Originally developed as a vacation destination for Jewish New Yorkers excluded from other resorts due to early 20th-century antisemitism, the Borscht Belt was home to over 1,000 hotels at its peak. Grossinger’s was among the most prominent of these resorts, and its indoor pool building stood as a modernist centerpiece within the complex. This project seeks to commemorate the architectural legacy of the structure by reconstructing it digitally after its physical erasure.
Using Revit, a software typically employed for new construction, the building was reconstructed as a detailed digital model based on limited archival material. Available references included a single scaled floor plan and a collection of historic photographs. While the floor plan established the overall spatial footprint, the absence of scaled elevations required interpretive analysis to reconstruct vertical elements, wall assemblies, and the building’s distinctive geometric beamed ceiling. Architectural features were inferred through proportional reasoning, photographic study, and iterative modeling.
The resulting model prioritizes dimensional accuracy and material legibility, demonstrating how contemporary digital tools can be repurposed to document and preserve lost architecture. The project positions digital reconstruction as a method of cultural preservation, offering a way to retain architectural knowledge and spatial memory when physical structures no longer exist.
