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Two Camps on Osgood Pond

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Two Camps on Osgood Pond (1990) and co-author of another on Camp Santanoni (2000). In 1993, Kirschenbaum purchased Two camps White Pine Camp. Along with 22 other partners, he operated the camp first as a museum. Today, White Pine is a combi- nation rustic rental resort and ongoing historic preservation project, one that is on Osgood Pond likely to keep Kirschenbaum busy for years to come. PART ONE OF TWO White Pine Camp Words & pictures by LEE MANCHESTER Our tour started in the Caretaker’s Lake Placid News, July 21, 2006 Complex at White Pine Camp, where Kirschenbaum explained how the camp Last week, Adirondack Architec- from his “day job” as chairman of the had been built, and by whom, and tural Heritage offered tours of two Department of Counseling and Human when. camps on Osgood Pond, in Paul Development at the Warner School of In 1907, Adirondack hotelier Paul Smiths: White Pine Camp, and the University of Rochester, where he Smith was subdividing his vast hold- Northbrook Lodge. was known as one of the world’s lead- ings into camps for the well-to-do. New Architecturally distinct as the two ing authorities on the work of therapist York banker and businessman camps are from one another, they Carl Rogers. Archibald White and his much younger nonetheless have a great deal in common. In his off hours, Kirschenbaum has wife, Ziegfield Follies girl Olive Moore Both were built by the brilliant but built an equally distinguished career in White, bought 10 acres from Smith on a unschooled local contractor-cum-archi- historic preservation, first as the direc- point of Osgood Pond. tect, Ben Muncil. tor of a nonprofit organization head- It was some years before White Pine Both were precursors of Muncil’s quartered at Great Camp Sagamore Camp acquired its current expanse of 35 masterpiece, Camp Topridge, consid- (1973-89), then as Adirondack Life’s acres. Throughout the Whites’ tenure, ered the archetype of the Adirondack first historic-preservation editor (1985) they leased the 1-acre plot where their Great Camp. and founding president of Adirondack caretaker’s lodge was located. Both served as summer resorts for Architectural Heritage (1990), and later When the camp was bought by two North American politicians. as author of one book on Sagamore Irwin Kirkwood, in 1920, he persuaded Northbrook Lodge was built in the 1920s for Canadian Senator Wilfred L. McDougald and, despite his several set- backs, served as the senator’s retreat until his death in 1942. White Pine Camp has been around for nearly a century, and nearly every year of its history has contributed to the camp’s long story. It is best known, however, for the 10 weeks in 1926 when U.S. President Calvin Coolidge used it as his “Summer White House.” White Pine and Northbrook have at least one more thing in common: Both qualify for the “Great Camp” architec- tural designation, though neither struc- ture is characterized by the birch-bark highlights and twigwork trim that have become the popular signatures of Adirondack architecture. OUR TOUR guide last week was Howie Kirschenbaum. Old piers from the dock at White Pine Camp’s Kirschenbaum retired this spring "New Boathouse" stick up out of Osgood Pond. Paul Smith to sell him the Caretaker’s modern architectural style — some now said, “but in somewhat of an abstract Complex and everything in between, call it Northwest Modern — with soar- form.” thus completing the current camp prop- ing roof lines, asymmetrical buildings, Rustic building features are still erty. and extensive and unusual use of win- present at White Pine — the rough sid- White Pine Camp was designed for dow lighting in corners, clerestories, ing, the stonework, the occasional use the Whites by two architects. The first and unusual window shapes and sizes of logs — but more subtly than in the group of buildings was conceived in that captured the natural lighting and stereotypical bark-and-twig Great 1907-08 by William Massarene, of revealed the outdoors in delightful pat- Camps found elsewhere in the Manhattan. Three years later, in 1911, terns,” Kirschenbaum said. Adirondacks. the Whites hired Addison Mizner to Interviewed in 1926 about his archi- design additions and alterations to tectural concept for White Pine Camp, ‘Brainstorm’ siding Massarene’s original product. The Massarene said that he was trying to One of the distinguishing features of instructions of both architects were car- “create civilization in the abstract.” White Pine Camp is the siding used on ried out by contractor Ben Muncil. “Using geometrical shapes as an nearly all its buildings. “Brainstorm” abstraction ‘civilized’ the rustic siding, now ubiquitous throughout the The initial design Adirondack camp,” Kirschenbaum Adirondacks, had its first known U.S. Massarene was fresh out of college and had just returned to the States from a graduation tour of Europe when Archibald White hired him in 1907 to design White Pine Camp. The complex Massarene envisioned for the Whites was, indeed, one of the Adirondack Great Camps, according to criteria Kirschenbaum has identified in his studies of camps all over the region — but, among that body of Great Camps, White Pine was architecturally unique. The features that make for a “Great Camp,” Kirschenbaum says, are: • A multi-building complex with dis- tinct functions housed in separate build- ings (kitchen, dining room, sleeping rooms, living room, game room/library, etc.); • Set on a point of a lake; • Usually designed for use by a single family; • Using rustic materials in an artistic fashion, and • Having a high degree of self-suffi- ciency. While qualifying as a Great Camp, Massarene’s architecture departed sig- nificantly from the standard set by William West Durant in the Raquette Lake area, typified by Sagamore. “The buildings [at White Pine Camp] are rarely symmetrical,” Kirschenbaum said. “They go off at all sorts of angles and shapes, and they have unusual roof lines. ... It’s a little bit Japanese, a little bit Prairie Style, but not really any of them.” Massarene’s design featured a “pre- The bowling alley at White Pine Camp. application at White Pine. According to an oft-told but only partly true tale, brainstorm was created as a compromise. Massarene, the story says, wanted to sheath the White Pine buildings in clap- board siding, but contractor Ben Muncil thought that rustic half-log sid- ing was more appropriate for an Adirondack camp. Splitting the differ- ence, Muncil worked with Paul Smiths millwright Charles Nichols to create a rough-milled siding whose edge showed the natural contour of the log from which it had been cut. The name of “brainstorm” siding was inspired, according to the story, by a well-publicized murder trial of the day in which the defendant claimed to The owners’ cabin at White Pine Camp — where, for 10 weeks have been compelled by an irresistible in 1926, President Calvin Coolidge had his Summer White House. “brainstorm” — the first insanity plea. It was just such a brainstorm, said ‘Out-Massarened’ he got work guiding at an Upper St. Muncil and Nichols, that had inspired In 1911, Archibald White hired a Regis Lake camp, but soon found that their innovation. new architect to revise and add on to he had a special knack for carpentry, Much of the “brainstorm” myth is Massarene’s designs. The architect was which became his primary vocation. probably true — but, according to 39-year-old Addison Mizner, a native Muncil worked hard and, marrying Kirschenbaum, not the part about its of the San Francisco Bay area. at age 22, fed a growing family. having been the original creation of Though Mizner had no formal train- Stymied from graduating to contracting Muncil and Nichols. ing and could not draw blueprints, he from carpentry because he couldn’t “We have drawings where was nonetheless a competent, creative read, Muncil ordered correspondence Massarene drew this in as early as July architect, as evidenced after he moved courses in blueprint reading and archi- 1907,” Kirschenbaum said last week, to Florida in 1918. The designer of tectural drawing that were read to him tracing with his finger the wavy, natural Boca Raton, Mizner’s work is credited by one of his daughters. edge of a brainstorm siding board on a today for having launched a “Florida Ben Muncil built several landmark building at White Pine Camp. Renaissance” in the 1920s and inspiring buildings in the Gabriels area, includ- “Massarene had just [returned from architects throughout North America. ing the Brighton Town Hall, the Mount Europe],” he said. “It turns out that in At White Pine, Mizner was hired not Mercy Convent at Sanatorium Gabriels, England there is a style of siding called for his originality, but for his ability to and the Catholic churches of the ‘weatherboarding’ that looks exactly follow up on the work of his predecessor. Assumption (Gabriels) and St. Paul’s like this — and it goes back to the “He very faithfully followed (Bloomingdale). 1600s. Massarene almost surely saw it Massarene’s original intentions,” But it was his camps for which in England and liked what it did. Kirschenbaum said outside one of the Muncil is best known, the most famous “What is probably true is that it had cottages Mizner designed, “but I think being Marjorie Merriweather Post’s 68- never been done here before. I’ve never he out-Massarened Massarene on this building complex known as Camp found an earlier example in this coun- building.” Topridge, situated between St. Regis try.” Lake and Spectacle Ponds. Besides Massarene’s abstract build- Ben Muncil ing style and White Pine’s brainstorm The third member of the creative Interim ownership; restoration siding, the camp’s most distinctive fea- team behind White Pine Camp was Archibald and Olive Moore White ture is its very extensive landscape builder Ben Muncil, who was 40 years had a stormy marriage.
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