Adirondack Style: Great Camps and Rustic Lodges

Sample chapter from Adirondack Style: Great Camps and Rustic Lodges

Prospect Point, Upper Saranac Lake

by Lynn Woods

Adolph Lewisohn, a native of Hamburg who immigrated to America in 1867, made his money in copper mines: in 1898, the United Metals Smelting Company, of which he was president, controlled 55 percent of the U.S. copper market. The Guggenheims would wrest control of the trust from him the next year, but Lewisohn remained fabulously wealthy: in 1920 he was worth a cool $200 million. He spent it lavishly, according to Stephen Birmingham’s Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York. The diminutive, bespectacled bon vivant, who enjoyed lieder singing and tap dancing well into his eighties, threw extravagant New Year’s Eve parties in his Fifth Avenue mansion, took frequent excursions by chauffeured car or private rail car, and bought up Impressionist paintings (a hobby that was derided by his peers as a waste of money). He also was a noted philanthropist—his name is attached to many New York City institutions–and was an ardent supporter of prison reform.

Lewisohn’s great camp, Prospect Point, a complex of regal chalets on a high peninsula overlooking Upper Saranac Lake, set a new standard of grandiose: the 40-some buildings totaled 40,000 square feet and collectively comprise the largest Adirondack camp ever built. After Adolph died in 1938, the camp was sold to a succession of owners, first becoming a resort and then a Jewish girls’ camp before being purchased in 1969 by Young Life, a non-denominational Christian organization that operates it as a summer camp. Young Life’s renovation and expansion projects have greatly altered the complex, although the prepossessing, half-timbered exteriors of the main camp buildings and boathouse are little changed.

Prospect Point was the crowning achievement of Saranac Lake architect William Coulter, who built dozens of Great Camps in the area. It was constructed over the winter of 1903-4, with a crew of more than 200 workmen bringing in all the supplies by barge (at that time there was no road access). The most distinctive feature of the four main lodges is the half-timbered gables, set within the wide eaves, with white birch bark originally filling in the interstices between the peeled split-poles of pine. The gables appear massive because they overhang the second floor, which is sheathed in dark brown planks and set back behind a balcony or porch, which in turn juts over the bark-covered log slabs of the first floor. (This “jettying,” as it is called, derives from medieval half-timber buildings in northern Europe and is characteristic of many camps designed by Coulter.)

The porch of the main lodge, approached up a wide central staircase, is a study in heroic-scaled rusticity, with its notched log corners, double-log columns with rustic brackets, and log rafters supporting the roof; the floor juts out beyond the roof line, enabling occupants to catch the sun. The long covered walkway leading to the dining room is completely enclosed by windows of small-paned glass, an amenity more akin to an urban transit system.

A rack of elk antlers still adorns the outside gable of the dining room, as if it were a royal hunting lodge; two deep-set log corbels lead the eye to the entrance.  It’s one of the more rustic rooms in the camp, with walls and ceiling still covered in shaggy white birch bark and framed in peeled spruce logs, centered around an arched stone hearth. The enormous round, rough-hewn pine table is one of the few surviving pieces of original furniture, and the room is still graced by the original copper light fixture, which resembles a set of large lustrous bells. The living room of the East Lodge, which was built for one of his daughters, is also extant, its walls of green-stained spruce planks—each fashioned from a log turned on a lathe–capacious built-in window seats, and beamed ceiling an Adirondack interpretation of the Craftsman style. The shallow room has a stairway on one side of the massive hearth (originally there were two, symmetrically arranged on either side of the fireplace), whose mantle is a peeled half log supported on a row of log ends. The pattern of brown-stained peeled-log Xes along the top of the wall is a restrained rustic touch.

Prospect Point belonged to the enclave of German Jewish camps along the southern part of the lake—a cluster that was a defiant response to the blatant anti-Semitic policies of the Lake Placid Club and other Adirondack resorts, as well as being indicative of the close ties among this group of prominent New York families. However, it stands apart from its neighbors in the scale of the buildings, the substantial acreage that Lewisohn amassed—totaling 4,000 acres–the size of the staff (200 servants were employed, including singing and dancing teachers, a barber, chess player, and caddy he brought with him), and variety of recreational amenities, including two tennis courts, a mini golf range, horse stables, two boathouses, and a crescent natural sand beach. Lewisohn kept 10 guides lodged at the camp at his beck and call 24/7, each considered the best in a particular specialty, i.e. trout fishing or bear hunting. All this accommodated the mogul and his entourage of family, friends and protégées for just four brief weeks in August.

It was Adolph’s intent to unexpectedly lavish his guests with luxury and entertainment in a remote wilderness location. Young Life has vigilantly maintained the buildings and, according to Young Life camp manager Ryan Silvius, it has a parallel aim in exceeding the expectations of the more than 300 high school students who arrive each week in the summer. One senses Lewisohn would approve of the high ropes course installed near the entrance, parasailing adventures over the lake and food Silvius describes as fit for a resort. On the other hand, the camp’s democratic values defy the sense of privilege that so much defined Lewisohn’s class. The high life takes on a different meaning at Prospect Point today, though the aristocratic spirit lives on its ornamental gables.