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The
History of The Beginning of the Rustic Movement in the Adirondacks
& Adirondack Architecture. Discovery
of Rustic Architecture and Rustic Furniture
William West Durant, son of a
railroad tycoon and the first Adirondack developer, began what is
considered the first "Great Camp" on the shores of Raquette
Lake in the late 1870's. Called Camp Pine Knot, it was a collection of
rustic dwellings resembling the Swiss chalets he had seen in Europe,
but with primal, naturalistic appeal that heralded in a whole new
architectural style. Cottages were designed specifically for sleeping,
or dining and other functional uses. The Main Lodge connected to these
outer buildings by covered pathways ornamentally decorated with bark,
branches and twig rails and roofs. Roaring fires in native stone
fireplaces warmed guests on cool or damp days. Vertical bark half-log
siding blended into the lofty wooded surroundings.
To Pine Knot, Durant invited the
wealthy millionaires of the late 19th Century - who welcomed the
serenity and privacy or the pristine woodland lakes. Out of the
crowded, disease-ridden cities they came, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans,
the Whitneys and Huntingtons. They acquired huge tracts of land in the
newly formed Park and hired architects who could copy the Durant style
and began entertaining lavishly. Entire communities of local people
found year-round employment as builders, guides, caretakers, cooks,
and housekeepers. Interiors carried out the rustic theme with twig and
peeled log furnishings, creating even today - a whole new cottage
industry. Many have survived and open to the public.
Very little was known about the
Adirondacks in upstate New York at the beginning of the 19th Century.
In fact, it didn't even have a name until Professor Ebenezer Emmons, a
remarkable geologist from Williams College, was appointed by the NYS
Legislature to survey the area in 1836. When colonist began looking
for land beyond New England and migrated through New York and on to
the Ohio Valley, they bypassed the "North Woods" due to the
rugged terrain, inaccessible routes and severe winters.
By 1892 when the Adirondack Park was
established by law, the population within the 6 million acres had
risen to 113,000 people. Most residents lived in hamlets along the
rivers, lakes and railroad corridors. The towns sprang up wherever
logging, mining and tannery operations existed. Although still
sparsely settled late in the 19th Century, many New Yorkers felt that
the land was "hunted out and timbered out." Following a
great legislative battle in 1894, the State owned 2.7 million acres
were set aside by Article XIV - the "forever wild" amendment
- as a wilderness preserve to protect the forests and wetlands of the
Park. The remaining 48% of Park lands are privately owned. About
one-fourth of this is owned by the Forest Products Industry, another
third is held by owners of large private estates and clubs in parcels
larger than 500 acres. There are approximately 160,000 permanent
residents in the Park today and the numbers have shown a steady
increase since the 1960's. The Adirondack Park Agency, established in
1971 to plan and regulate both public and private land, estimated that
some 21,000 single family homes were added to the Park between 1967
and 1987.
But - back to the history of Adirondack
Architecture!
The Environmental Influence
As the first settlers cleared the land,
crude log cabins were erected from the almost inexhaustible supply of
timber. Chinks were filled with moss and clay and local stone was used
for foundations and fireplaces. Oversized timbers support roofs and
unpeeled logs were used for walls. Simple, colonial-style frame houses
came later as soon as water-driven mills were built but with
modifications more suited to the environment. Roofs were flattened and
extended over porches - to insulate with snow during the long winters
and to protect entryways from constant summer drizzle. To reduce heat
loss, openings for doors and windows were smaller than those in urban
dwellings. Window glass was difficult to obtain and transport over
rough roads or by water. Nails and wrought iron hardware were
sometimes available from local forges.
Natural Resources Discovered
The first to come were transient hunters
and trappers who built temporary shelters of local natural materials.
They penetrated the tributaries of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers for
deer, bear, marten, mink and most of all - beaver. The fur traders in
Albany alone bought 80,000 beaver pelts a year during the late 1790's.
Tanneries were needed to process the pelts and tanneries needed
Adirondack hemlock bark. Revolutionary soldiers established forts on
the western shores of Lake Champlain and in the Mohawk Valley and many
veterans returned to these areas to establish farms. The timber and
iron ore needs during the Civil War prompted deeper penetration into
the forests of the Adirondacks. Sawmills sprang up to meet the
insatiable demand for timber and entire mountainsides were clear-cut.
But the most dramatic impact on development occurred in the later part
of the 19th century.
Escaping to the Wilderness
Growing prosperity in the north following
the Civil War led to the Gilded Age and the march of the wilderness
tourists. Fueled by romantic tales such as Murray's "Adventures
in Wilderness" (1869) and E. J. Wallace's "Descriptive Guide
to the Adirondacks" (1872) as well as the sketches in
"Adirondacks Illustrated" (1874) by Seneca Ray Stoddard, the
region gained national exposure as a recreational resort. In 1873, Dr.
Edward Livingston Trudeau was carried into the Adirondacks on a
stretcher and recovered shortly after from his bout with consumption.
He soon established a health resort in Saranac Lake and went on to
achieve international recognition as pioneer in tuberculosis
treatment. Tourists arrived by stagecoach, steamboats and rail. In
1875 a railroad was completed along the entire west shore of Lake
Champlain north from Albany. By 1889, a train connected Plattsburgh to
Lake Placid, Saranac Lake and on to the Benson Mines in Tupper Lake.
W. Seward Webb's Adirondack and St. Lawrence Railroad connected Utica
to Malone and in 1892 - Herkimer to Old Forge and the steamboats of
the Fulton Chain. Lavish guesthouses and hotels sprang up along these
routes including the spectacular Prospect House (1879) at Blue
Mountain Lake, built by Frederick Durant. He was the nephew of Thomas
Durant, a Union Pacific railroad magnate and the largest private
landowner in the Adirondacks by the 1870's. The Prospect House was six
stories high, had three hundred rooms and was cloaked on three sides
by twenty-five foot piazzas. Each room had running water, steam-heat
and steam-powered electricity. But it was Thomas's son William West
Durant who developed the architectural style known today as the
"Great Camp." Schooled in Europe, Durant was brought back in
1874 to help develop his father's land investments in the central
Adirondacks. Over the next twenty-five years he built entire townships
beginning in Raquette Lake. His rustic-designed buildings at Camp Pine
Knot in 1877-1878 transformed the feature-less typical cabins of the
day into an artistic adaptation of the Swiss Chalets he had seen in
Europe. The primary feature of his Great Camps was the use of building
materials from the surrounding forests. The logs were corner notched
for a tight fit and especially chosen for their shape and texture.
Decorative "twigs" were used for porches, balconies and even
furniture. Native stone used for foundations and chimneys added to the
artistic appeal. To inhibit destruction by fire, clusters of buildings
were built to separate sleeping quarters from kitchens and dining
areas but were connected by decorative, covered walkways. Durant's
designs were photographed by Stoddard and soon copied by other
builders. The wealthy streamed in as guests and inevitability bought
up huge tracts of land to build their own wilderness estates. Hundreds
of local people found steady employment especially craftsmen, guides
and caretakers - and they too built homes.
The Park Today
Tourism remains a vital industry in the
Adirondack Park and continues to shape it's development. Many of the
tax-burdened estates have been divided and sub-divided and the Forest
Industry struggles with easements and "manage growth"
issues. The forest has overtaken many of the 19th Century hamlets, but
the surviving towns have shown steady growth since the 1960's. Today's
urban dwellers, like their industrial revolutionary forbearers, are
surging into the wilderness in search of the simple, nurturing
benefits of the mountains, lakes and forests. Demolition and decay
threaten the treasure trove of turn-of-the century Victorian dwellings
on Main Streets. The craftsmanship of early builders is nearly extinct
and virtually unaffordable when available. Maintenance-free concrete
and metal-sided buildings or factory-built modular homes are replacing
the Greek Revival, Italianate, Bungalow and Neoclassical styles of
yesterday. The entire aesthetic appeal of the many quaint mountain
villages is at stake. Will the tourists of the 21st Century find
Adirondack communities enticing, nostalgic and in harmony with
nature's beauty? It is up to the 160,000 residents of today's Park
to decide.
Adirondacks State Park -
History
The Iroquois and the
Algonquin were the Adirondacks first peoples. They ventured
into the mountains to hunt, and left for more moderate lower
elevations in the winter.
Except for trappers and
military posts on Lake George and Champlain, Europeans largely
left the area alone until the 1840s, when logging began in
earnest. By the 1850s, New York was the leading lumber
producing state. Over the course of the next fifty years, the
State of New York would acquire a huge chunks of land after
loggers had stripped them of timber and then moved on,
defaulting on their property taxes.
But early on, there was
another sort of interest in the Adirondacks. The first party
to survey the mountains, in 1837, included a painter named
Charles Cromwell Ingham, who produced paintings that astonished
many who never realized that a great wilderness lay at the
northeast's doorstep. In 1857 William Stillman of Cambridge,
Massachusetts started the Philosophers' Camp, locating it
first on Follansby Pond near Long Lake and later moving it
Amperand Pond near Saranac Lake. Notable scientists and
philosophers came to the Philosophers' Camp to hike, paddle,
fish—and talk and write. Guests included Ralph Waldo
Emerson, the great American philosopher, and Louis Agassiz,
who developed the theory of how glaciers affected the
landscape, including that of the Adirondacks.
One of the first outdoor
guidebooks—William H.H. Murray's Adventures in the
Wilderness—sparked popular interest in the Adirondacks
and the rustic life as a way to recreate. Business boomed at
rough-hewn lodges such as Paul Smiths. The legendary
Adirondack guide was born in this era, combining acute
wilderness skills—the ability to find just the right fishing
hole or hunting spot—with talent as a rollicking campfire
entertainer and the knack for pampering the rich while making
them think they were roughing it. Wanting their own castles,
the rich of the era started to build opulent private lodges,
known as "great camps," which had an architectural
style that hybridized Swiss chalets with American log cabins.
William West Durant was the great style-setter of the great
camp, building properties that were later bought by the
Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers when Durant went broke.
Even though the
Adirondacks were swarming with guides and tourists, no white
person had scaled Mt. Marcy until Verplanck Colvin in 1872.
Colvin was a surveyor who ventured into the Adirondacks to
trace the source of the mighty Hudson River. Colvin would
spend the next 30 years surveying the entire Adirondack
region, getting to know the mountains better than anyone of
the time.
Colvin was a major
proponent for protecting the park from over development and
timber harvesting. In 1885, the New York State Legislature
created the "Adirondack Forest Preserve." Protecting
the Hudson River Watershed —and New York City's water
supply—was a major impetus for this legislation. The
metropolis was growing, and silt was building up in the
harbor. But preserving the Adirondacks as a "pleasuring
ground" was also a major reason. The law was strengthened
in 1892, and then again 1894, with a law dictating the
ground-breaking concept that the forest should remain
"forever wild."
The original 681,374
acres of the forest preserve have grown to include more than
2.6 million acres of public land. Most of the park is
privately owned, subject to stringent development laws.
History of Adirondack
Furniture
Prior to the 1830’s, little was
even known about the Adirondack Mountain Area in
Upstate New York. After the Civil War, Ebenezer Emmons
was asked to survey these woods and the Adirondacks were
exposed as a recreational spot where an individual could go
and experience the wilderness. People began to move into this
area and this eventually brought in tourists enjoying the
outdoors. With the increase in tourism came extravagant hotels
and guesthouses that only the rich could afford.
A new style of architecture was born in the Adirondacks during
the 1870’s, which was also known as the “Great Camp”
by William West Durant. He built buildings with many designs
borrowed from Swiss Chalets in Europe. Materials were found
locally and the buildings were constructed to stand up to the
elements and harmonize with the environment. Rustic work made
use of limbs and roots of the native trees; their natural
curves and knots were used to create patterns used on Gables,
Porch Railings outside the buildings and for all types of
woodland furniture. Birch Bark was even used as
wallpaper while native stones were used in fireplaces and
chimneys.
These Great Camps became popular with the wealthy and
many tourists eventually bought land to build their own camps
in this style. The Adirondack Style spread from the
Adirondacks in New York to the Colorado Rocky Mountains. This
Adirondack Style included the standard “Adirondack
Chair” and soon encompassed furniture build from natural
tree limbs for every room inside the camp. Franklin Roosevelt
was so taken by this style that he pushed the idea that
buildings in the national parks system should emulate this
style as seen in The Inn at Yellowstone National Park. The
Adirondack Style was designed to withstand the elements,
provide comfort to the inhabitants, and to harmonize with
nature. It’s no wonder that its popularity still exists
today even though the use of this style has declined since the
1930’s.
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