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    Great Camp Sagamore: The Vanderbilts' Adirondack Retreat
    Great Camp Sagamore: The Vanderbilts' Adirondack Retreat
    Great Camp Sagamore: The Vanderbilts' Adirondack Retreat
    Ebook155 pages2 hours

    Great Camp Sagamore: The Vanderbilts' Adirondack Retreat

    By Beverly Bridger and Alfred Vanderbilt III

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    Great Camp Sagamore was built by William West Durant and bought by Alfred Vanderbilt in 1901 to be his family's Adirondack retreat. Vanderbilt and his wife, Margaret, welcomed family and friends, who enjoyed its sprawling grounds and buildings for decades. After Margaret's death, though, the camp changed hands and began to decline until it was rescued by preservationists and then became a National Historic Landmark in 2000. Today, visitors to the camp participate in maintaining its grandeur, learning about and preserving the past. Read the remarkable story of one of the most unique places in the Adirondacks, written by Sagamore's director, Beverly Bridger.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateMay 15, 2012
    ISBN9781614235675
    Great Camp Sagamore: The Vanderbilts' Adirondack Retreat
    Author

    Beverly Bridger

    Beverly Bridger is the Director of Great Camp Sagamore. In that role, she oversees the preservation efforts as the Camp, as well as the day-to-day operations. She has maintained strong relationships with Camp visitors, local businesses, and national organizations, as well as other Vanderbilt estates throughout the country.

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      Book preview

      Great Camp Sagamore - Beverly Bridger

      Published by The History Press

      Charleston, SC 29403

      www.historypress.net

      Copyright © 2012 by Beverly Bridger

      All rights reserved

      Cover images and all color images by Davescranton.com, © Adirondack IMAGES Photography.

      Vanderbilt family photos included by permission of Alfred G. Vanderbilt. Collins photos from Sagamore archives with thanks.

      Unless otherwise noted, images appear courtesy of the Sagamore collection.

      Letters in Appendix III appear courtesy of the Collins family.

      With gratitude, the author recognizes Anne R. Bertholf for her generous assistance with many textual details.

      First published 2012

      e-book edition 2012

      ISBN 978.1.61423.567.5

      print ISBN 978.1.60949.589.3

      Library of Congress CIP data applied for.

      Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      To Barbara Glaser,

      founder, philanthropist and friend

      who won’t take credit for saving Sagamore, but who must, in her natural good grace, allow me to give it to her.

      And to Leigh, Drew and Michael, who have lived and loved Sagamore with me.

      Road marker. Photo from Three Miles to Sagamore, a Vanderbilt family photo album from the 1940s donated to Sagamore by Alfred G. Vanderbilt. Photographer: Bert Clark Thayer.

      Contents

      Foreword, by Alfred G. Vanderbilt III

      Margaret

      The Gilded Age

      The Adirondack Vacation

      The Architectural Legacy of William West Durant

      The Wealthiest Young Man in America

      Expanding the Camp

      Sports and Games

      Sagamore Pets and Animals

      Living in the Workers’ Village

      Bark and Artisans: Creating the Rustic Style

      Call Me Mrs. Emerson

      Sagamore After Margaret

      Maintaining and Preserving Sagamore

      Taking Care of Sagamore Now

      Great Camps History

      Historic District

      Afterword: There Is Only One Great Camp Sagamore

      Appendix I: Richard and Margaret Collins at Sagamore

      Appendix II: Margaret Emerson, My Grandmother—One of a Kind

      Appendix III: Selected letters from Mr. Vanderbilt’s Secretary Charles Crocker to Richard Collins

      Inspired by the American arts and crafts movement, Sagamore is a standing monument to its artisans. They used the materials of the land and in doing so honored for us all our connection to nature.

      In New York City, Mrs. Astor might have said to Mrs. Vanderbilt in polite conversation, Tell me, my dear, when are you vacating to your Adirondack camp this year? The reply from Mrs. Vanderbilt might have been, We plan to vacate by July 10th. The vacation was invented in the Adirondacks.

      Foreword

      It was like Brigadoon, the legendary village that appeared out of the mists only once every seven years, just to disappear again. The people who lived in the village aged just one year of seven. And everyone was happy all the time. That’s how I remember Sagamore.

      We never called it a Great Camp. Usually, we just said camp, or Sagamore. Are you coming up to camp? We hope you will.

      My grandfather, the first Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, bought Sagamore from William West Durant in 1901. The Vanderbilts were one of early America’s success stories. Cornelius Vanderbilt (the Commodore) made the family’s fortune in shipping before the Civil War. By his sixties, he was the richest man in America. At about seventy years of age, he sold all his shipping interests and began buying the independent railroads that were springing up in and around New York City. He unified them, built Grand Central Terminal and named the Vanderbilt railroad the New York Central.

      He left everything to his oldest son, William Henry Vanderbilt. By the time William died in 1885, the fortune had become the largest in the world. Cornelius Vanderbilt II, my grandfather’s father, was next in line, and when he died in 1899, Alfred became his primary heir.

      For Alfred, who was newly married and just twenty-four years old, Sagamore was a key part of an extraordinary life.

      His parents’ generation had built some of the largest mansions in the country, and he had grown up in a 154-room Loire Valley–style chateau that took up the entire west side of Fifth Avenue between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth Streets. His cousin Consuelo Vanderbilt had married the Duke of Marlborough and was overseeing the restoration of Blenheim Palace. His sister, Gladys, married Count Szechenyi of Hungary.

      Building mansions, however, seems to have been exactly what Alfred Vanderbilt did not want to do. He preferred an active life, a country life, and spent as much time outdoors as he could. His main residence was an agrarian estate in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, called Oakland Farms. Located near Newport, Rhode Island, the summer seat of the family, Oakland made it convenient for Alfred to visit his mother, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt II, at the Breakers, her seventy-room summer palazzo.

      He solved the problem of a New York residence in 1907 by becoming the first guest to sign the register at the Plaza Hotel, where he maintained a nine-room suite and later, in 1912, built a hotel of his own: the Vanderbilt, at Thirty-fourth Street and Park Avenue. He kept apartments and town houses in London and Paris and estates in the countryside around them. In 1909, he commissioned the largest houseboat in England (it was larger than the royal family’s) so his family could watch the regatta.

      He became a jet-setter before commercial aviation existed, traveling almost constantly, going to Europe as many as ten times a year when an ocean crossing could take as long as two weeks. Once, he traveled by ocean liner with one hundred horses, to drive his coach between London and Brighton. For Alfred, a camp in the Adirondacks was a perfect complement to his evolving lifestyle.

      In 1909, he divorced his first wife and two years later married Margaret Emerson McKim, daughter of Dr. Isaac Emerson of Baltimore, the inventor of Bromo-Seltzer. Young and vivacious, Margaret was the apple of her father’s eye, and when she and my grandfather met for the first time at the Plaza Hotel in the winter of 1908, they fell in love. The newlyweds shared an equal passion for outdoor life.

      It’s not hard to imagine Alfred bringing Margaret to camp for the first time. They would have been thirty-one and twenty-six years old; he was handsome, and she was beautiful. They would have taken his private rail car, the Wayfarer, traveling the long hours through the countryside from Grand Central Terminal.

      Finally nearing the end of the two-day trip, they would have come through the sweet pines at dusk. As the horse-drawn carriages drew near to camp, fires and Roman candles were lit all along the miles of road. It was part of a tradition, a drum roll of sorts, to alert people in camp that visitors were arriving and to tell the visitors that they were about to experience something extraordinary.

      As the fires were lit, the woods would have come alive from the sound of the coach wheels, harnesses and the horses’ hooves striking gravel. Trail guides would have waved to the guests from their positions along the road. And then, as the carriages slowed approaching the entrance to camp, the travelers would have felt the deep, healing peace of the Adirondacks.

      And then as they came over the rise, Sagamore appeared like a jewel—those extraordinary wooden buildings set perfectly on the glittering lake with a manicured croquet lawn as its centerpiece. The lights in the Main Lodge, dining hall and cabins would have sent a warm glow across the compound as the smell of wood fires and delicious food wafted up from the kitchen. And at last, as the horses came to a rest, the weary travelers would know they had found heaven.

      I was a small child when I came to camp. What I remember best are the deer walking through the compound to eat from our hands like pets, the sunlight on the Main Lodge, the mists every morning on the lake and the atmosphere

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