Even Jane Austen has been zombiefied.
These full itineraries and the overt message of sex in the honeymoon resorts’ later decades reflected a robust American consumerism. Newspapers called the resorts “carpeted seduction pads” that were “heavy on the hedonism.” A national piece in LIFE magazine accused the country of “surfeit affluent vulgarity” in a piece that featured a racy
bathtub photo.
A few decades later, the scene at Penn Hills only hints at the honeymoon resort’s former life. The circular beds are now moldy mattresses in dark rooms whose windows have been shattered. This is what happens to extreme excess, Penn Hills seems to say. It does not last.
So, we cope with this impermanence by turning the lens back on ourselves.
“We like the apocalypse in the same way that a mopey teenager might like the idea of their own funeral,” wrote Brockway. “We want to see our decaying remains and revel in the tragic glory that we couldn't appreciate until it was too late.
We want to see crumbling skyscrapers and flooded metropolises and know that, once upon a time, we built
those things.”
“The apocalypse appeals to our arrogance because — let's face it — when you talk about doomsday you're really saying ‘That time when everybody else died but not me,’ ” said Brockway. (He wrote a nonfiction book called Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody.)
He has a point. Today, Penn Hills draws a range of different kinds of people to its ruins. One group ran an unpermitted simulated military event with airsoft guns at the resort in 2016, while another group held an overnight couples retreat with a live band. Adventure seekers continue to trek through the overgrown weeds and vacant buildings to explore and take selfies.
Photos by Seph Lawless
Text and 360° Views by Jessica Glazer • Design by Martin Flores
If
you step over the
guardrail on Rtes. 191 and
447 in Pennsylvania and onto the property of Penn Hills Resort, you will find what looks like a scene from the apocalypse. Heart-shaped bathtubs lean against trees, the twisted remains of a burned down building stand next to a creek, and nearly every building is tagged
with graffiti.
Penn Hills in the Poconos was once a kitschy, red-carpeted newlywed getaway. Now it’s a virtually abandoned property where people frequently trespass to take photos of decaying Americana. One such photographer is Seph Lawless, whose photos of Penn Hills – and of abandoned malls and amusement parks – often go viral.
But why? Why do these scenes
of the post-apocalypse capture
our imagination?
One theory for why we love dystopian films and books like the Hunger Games and Stephen King novels is that they let us face our own mortality at a safe distance. Another theory is that in our sanitized digital world, we crave the surprise of something new and potentially dangerous. Robert Brockway has another theory.
The property, which is easily visible from the road, had been struggling for years by the time it closed in 2009. That year, the co-owner died at age 102 and left $1.1 million in unpaid taxes.
To appreciate the draw that Penn Hills has, you have to understand what it was like in its heyday. Lawless, the photographer, explains that when his images of abandoned places go viral it’s because they share a common factor: they were all frequented at one time by millions of people. They hold some kind of social meaning because of that fact, which makes their subsequent fall more intimate, more personal.
If you opened up a wedding magazine like Bride’s from the 1960s through the 1980s, chances are you’d see pages and pages of glossy ads for Penn Hills, Cove Haven and other honeymoon resorts. This was a time when the Poconos rivaled Niagara Falls as a top newlyweds destination. There were around a dozen
couples-only resorts then.
They advertised together under the banner of the Poconos Honeymoon Resort Association. One of them, the Summit in Tannersville, spent $12,000 on postage in 1980 alone to mail out pamphlets that featured couples in heart-shaped bathtubs starting longingly at each other.
Aside from the kitsch — Penn Hills had a pool shaped like a wedding bell — the resorts were known for their frenetic social directors and packed schedule of activities, including scavenger hunts, horseback rides, weenie roasts and midnight swims. “It all leaves precious little time for sleep,” one newspaper said.
