It was once the largest private zoo in the country, drawing nearly 200,000 paying visitors in 1950 to see and walk among 600 wild animals and 250 tame ones at a sanctuary in the town of Catskill. Vending machines at the Catskill Game Farm sold crackers and milk in bottles that families could feed to the animals.
These days, the old Game Farm is a one-of-a-kind boutique hotel known as the Long Neck Inn that operates out of the zoo’s former Giraffe House.
“It’s quite charming, very tastefully done, and they get quite a bit of traffic,” says Fred Waring, who has the listing with his fellow Corcoran Country Living agent Jeanne Rakowski. “I think they’ve been booked every weekend for some time.”
“There are existing and well-maintained paths and trailways and roads throughout the 200 acres,” he says. The property is also dotted with old buildings that used to hold the more than 2,000 kangaroos, elephants, rhinos, lions and other exotic animals. “Some of these buildings could certainly be rehabbed and reused.”
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Jeanne Rakowski
Associate Broker
BY INHABIT EDITORS
The former roadside attraction—now with a boutique hotel in its old Giraffe House—lies on 200 acres just two hours from New York City.
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Rustic Charm at the Catskill Game Farm
Listing Agent
The Catskill Game Farm was launched in 1933 as the hobby of Roland Lindemann, a New York banker whose father had taught zoology in Germany, according to published reports. He began acquiring and breeding different varieties of deer, gradually adding a widening array of animals that included goats, mountain lions, camels, buffalo, bison, antelopes, yaks, and llamas.
In 1989, Lindemann sold the zoo to his daughter Kathie Schultz, who ran it with her husband, Jurgen. By then, the Catskills were no longer the tourist darling that they had been in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, and the zoo shut down in 2006 amid allegations that some of the animals were being sold to a Texas ranch that hosted canned hunts.
The current owners bought the Game Farm in 2012, and then in 2019 they opened the hotel and four equally charming and very private glamping sites.
“The owners are ready to move on now,” Waring says. “They’ve done as much as they want to with it.”
The two-story Giraffe House, in its current hotel configuration, is anything but your ordinary bed and breakfast.
This sprawling 9,000-square-foot building has common areas, a game room, six guest bedrooms, a full chef’s kitchen, an indoor Jacuzzi, and an outdoor hot tub and fire pit. Architectural details include lots of interior woodwork, very high ceilings (giraffes, remember?), hardwood flooring, and lots of vintage signage and other materials from the old Game Farm. You can still see marks on the walls where giraffes used to rub their heads. There is also a large barn with lots of storage.
Fred Waring
Associate Broker
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“What a lot of people like is that it's a dead-end destination.
It's like its own world in there.”
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Listing Agent
