The first Adirondack Great Camp

A tour of Durant’s Pine Knot camp, part of Raquette Lake history, now owned by SUNY Cortland

By Tom French

A pile of snowshoes (raquettes in French) left along the shore by Tories fleeing arrest in 1776 may be the source of Raquette Lake’s name, but its time as a summer destination began when Thomas Clark Durant decided the area was ripe for development. His private retreat, Pine Knot, is recognized today as the first Adirondack Great Camp. 

Thomas’s son, William West Durant, oversaw much of the design and construction, especially after his father’s death in 1885. What started as three or four initial buildings grew to over 20 by the 1890s when William, in financial trouble, sold the property to Collis P. Huntington, a former transcontinental railroad associate of his father’s. Huntington made more additions and changes.

Although not a formal architect, William West Durant is often considered the father of the Adirondack Great Camp Style with its rustic log construction, twig work, peeled bark siding, and separate buildings for different functions. Durant was also known for introducing the Swiss chalet roofline to the Adirondack vernacular. His influence can be seen in a host of other, later Great Camps such as Santanoni and Top Ridge, to name just two.

A peek inside Pine Knot

Every year, Adirondack Architectural Heritage (AARCH) offers a tour of Pine Knot, now referred to as Huntington Memorial Camp. Guided by Rhonda Pitoniak, the tour includes several landmarks along Raquette Lake including The Antlers, Echo Camp, and St. William’s on Long Point.

The excursion begins at The Antlers. The was hotel built in 1886 and opened in 1887 by Charles Bennett, an Adirondack guide who worked for the Durants. His hotel, associated buildings, and tent platforms could accommodate up to 200 people.  

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Bennett died in 1915. His sister sold the property in 1920, and it became a girls’ camp into the 1950s. The SUNY Cortland Faculty Student Association purchased the property in 1965. 

“Anybody who graduates from SUNY Cortland with a physical education, recreation, or secondary science degree, has to spend two weeks at Raquette Lake,” said Pitoniak, who is the director of SUNY Cortland’s W.H. Parks Family Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education.

“The students learn the skills needed to be out in the wilderness, and then they spend a week out on the trail hiking and paddling.”

During the AARCH tour, Pitoniak described the history of The Antlers, and the lifestyle of those who enjoyed the amenities. “They had nightly putting tournaments, a nine-hole golf course, a tennis court, several gazebos, and a carousel for the kids.” A shoreside “casino” served as a gathering space for dancing, concerts, and playing games such as pool and darts.

Antique spaces and furnishings

After a boat ride to Pine Knot, the AARCH group visited “The Chalet” with what can be considered the first Great Room of the Adirondacks. Pitoniak explained how every building in a great camp had its own purpose. “You don’t sleep in the same building you eat in, you don’t eat in the same building you play in, so this was the social gathering space.”

Pitoniak asked us not to step on the bear rug when we went inside, though we could lie on it for pictures if we took off our shoes.

Durant’s private cabin is now considered a museum space filled with mosaic twig-top tables and bric-a-brac collected by Durant from all over the world. Shelving is supported with small tree-root hands. Durant’s desk, with its “WD” trimmed in birch bark, looks out toward the lake. 

The “Glass Dining Room” with its extensive log and twig work was originally an open pavilion. William’s wife insisted it be enclosed during black fly season.

The Barque, a 60-foot houseboat with kitchen, two bedrooms, and two bathrooms with flush toilets, was also built to placate Janet Durant’s dislike of bugs. Abandoned in a bay, its hull was submerged for nearly seventy years until SUNY Cortland salvaged and restored it.

Small details, rich stories

Faced with financial difficulties, Durant turned to Collis Huntington in 1895 for help. Huntington purchased Pine Knot and added more buildings including a larger great-room, Metcalf Hall, that honored Durant with a large twig W within a dormer. 

According to Pitoniak, “Every letter of the alphabet is in the railing. Some of the letters are real interesting, but they’re there.”

According to oral history, the large glass windows in the front were carried by hand from North Creek to Blue Mountain Lake using poles with straps that held the glass. A bay window on the side is trimmed in birch bark with a heart, cross, and harp. The front door is large enough for two people to pass without breaking stride or conversation. 

When Huntington purchased the property, Durant relocated to Camp Uncas, a project he’d started in 1890. He sold that to J.P. Morgan in 1896 and moved to Sagamore. Still deep in debt by 1900, he again turned to Huntington, but a few days after arriving in the Adirondacks that summer, Huntington died of a heart attack at Pine Knot. Alfred Vanderbilt bought Sagamore in 1901. Durant was bankrupt by 1904.

A Great Camp revival

Huntington’s wife had no interest in the property, and it sat vacant for nearly 50 years until two Cortland professors stumbled upon it while looking for a property to host students.

“I can’t imagine what this place looked like after being left alone for 50 years,” Pitoniak said. “Trees had started to grow out of the roofs.”

Doctors Harlan “Gold” Metcalf and Walter Thurber discovered that Collis’s son, Archer, owned the property. After some discussion, it was purchased for $1 with the understanding that the name be changed to Huntington Memorial Camp. 

“In the first few years, the students did a lot more service projects and manual labor than learning about their prospective majors.”

One final interesting tidbit of Pine Knot history is that famed Adirondack photographer Seneca Ray Stoddard is believed to have had a darkroom in the carpenter shop. A wooden flue for noxious fumes to vent rises to the ceiling.

Honoring history

Pine Knot was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and further honored as a National Historic Landmark in 2004.

After touring the Pine Knot/Huntington Compound, the AARCH tour walked a mile to Echo Camp. Built by 1883 for Phineas Lounsbury, later the governor of Connecticut, the main building was meticulously recreated in 2017-18 by Kevin Kornmeyer, a contractor out of Boonville, for the owner. Its twin-towers echoes the lost camps of Fairview (Osprey Island in Raquette Lake) and The Cedars (Forked Lake). 

From the mid-40s until 1987, the property served as a girls’ camp.  

Finally, the AARCH group visited St. William’s, a Catholic church built by Durant in 1890. According to Sue Norris, Coordinator for the non-profit that maintains the church as a non-denominational lakeside retreat and cultural center, “When the workers asked for a church, Durant said, ‘Well, I need the workers, so of course we’re going to build the church.’”

Architect J.C. Cady design reflects the environment with shingle styling “from the very top all the way down like a glove.”

When the rail line arrived in Raquette Lake in 1900, the terminus became the new hub of activity and the community of Durant was doomed. Although services continued at the church in the summers for a time, by the 1940s, St. William’s was a summer retreat for Franciscan friars.

Church restorations

By the 1990s, declining use of the church along with changes with the friars and maintenance issues led to the formation of the nonprofit St. William’s on Long Point. 

The first order of business was restoring the church. “The granite stones underneath were tipped on edge, and we weren’t sure if the if the church would last the winter, but we put jacks in to stabilize it, and then two guys, including my husband, dug holes four-foot deep so the frost heaves would not affect them. They put the original stones back on top so it would be authentic.”

Over the next few years, all the cedar shake including the roof was replaced.  

Restoration also included plaster work and DIY archeology. “One of the board members and I were down on our hands and knees scraping off paint to find the original color of the vestibule floor.”

One unique feature inside the church is the hand-stenciled geometric pattern on the ceiling and front wall.  St. William’s on Long Point was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005 and offers an annual ecumenical service along with six weeks of summer programs on Thursday evenings.

More info about AARCH’s tours can be found at AARCH.com.