Yesterday being one of those perfect late fall days, my wife and I spent three hours paddling up Lake Placid’s western side. I took the camera along, and photographed mostly boathouses.
Here is a newer one. Most all the Adirondack boathouses have living space up top of one kind or another, sometimes outfitted as guest quarters, sometimes as game rooms or lounges. The oldest ones have plumbing . . . a feature not allowed if you build a new one. Under some silly “grandfather” arrangement, if your old boathouse had plumbing, you can tear it down and build a new one that has plumbing, also.
All the lake properties, no matter what size, are called “camps,” and all the camps are named. The “H” you see in the railing detail is the first letter of the camp’s name.
Most all the log work and handrail detail you see here is white cedar, cut in winter, bark left on.
This boathouse, being of recent vintage, would have been built out over the water atop a structural steel framing arrangement, bearing on ‘crete-filled pipe columns, the columns set into ‘crete-filled caissons sunk down to bedrock.
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Here is another one, much older than the previous. This one likely has a base frame of hemlock timbers.
The twig work under the railings is typical vernacular Adirondack, and is peeled white cedar. Siding on this one is halfsawn logs of peeled white cedar, painted red.
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I gotta digress here and show you the newest house built on the lake. The house has a boat canopy, not a full house.
The stonemason that did all the work here is the same great guy I used for my last job.
I hung out on the job while it was being framed, staying in touch with my stone man's schedule. The roof was stick framed using rafters that were all of TrusJoist's LSL material (think rimboard, only 1-3/4" thick), with ridges and valleys of LVL. The framer, another great guy, said that nailing it all up was a b*tch . . . the stuff being so hard and dense.
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Here is a newer boathouse. The lower siding is waney edge pine, called "brainstorm," the trim is all sawn sections of unpeeled white cedar. Notice the corner trim member nearest the camera, with its belled bottom. The rail posts are copper-capped, and the lower decoratave frieze band is done with pointed-end half logs of the unpeeled cedar.
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Moving around to the front, you can see in this photo, how the gable is sheeted in heavy birchbark. The guy that sells all this log and bark and twig stuff has an entire warehouse full of 42x42x42 pallets of birchbark.
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Edited 10/9/2006 6:55 pm ET by Gene_Davis
Let's take a break and look at the southeast elevation of Whiteface mountain, rearing up from beyond the end of the lake. The teenie feature you see at the top is a weather station, built by some CCC workers during the Roosevelt-Great Depression era. The scar is a rockslide, and is typical of the higher mountains here.
Parts of Lake Placid are about 250 feet deep . . . I don't know how far the bottom is below the canoe, here in the western channel.
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Edited 10/9/2006 7:45 pm ET by Gene_Davis
Here are a couple that digress from the usual shapes and details.
This one, all craftsman-style except for the carpenter-gothic jigsawed bargeboards, has a cool monitor-style upper gallery.
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This newer one, its lower box for the boats having horizontal themes, has an interesting superstructure, roofed in prefinished standing seam steel, my overall favorite roofing material. The structure, atop its steel platform skeleton, is an exquisite timberframe, done by Steve Amstutz of Amstutz Woodworking.
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I gotta throw in another house. This one, an exquisite little thing built on a big rock ledge right on the water's edge, dates back to about 1875. Originally built as part of a boys' camp, the great room in the upper right section still had the shuffleboard stenciling painted on its floorboards when the present owner bought it as a derelict, about 15 years ago.
The view from any of the windows, porches, or decks, is all wild water and mountain and woods . . . no civilization evident.
Nothing new can be built this close to the water nowadays.
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How close to the water can you build now? Does the lake level vary much? What about flooding issues if you got severe rains. We got 16" in one storm last October, good think the lake level was already don for the winter.Tom
Douglasville, GA
You can build a boathouse right on the water as shown. All our boathouse lakes, and there are quite a few, are either dammed or locked, and water levels don't vary much.
A new house needs to be setback from the waterfront a minimum of 75 feet, I think.
Thanks for the pics. Really great. We can't have any on the lake I'm on in NH although there is one, not sure when it was built but it's nothing like those pictured.
Tom
Douglasville, GA
A couple final boathouses.
This one, quite old, may go back to the 1880s. Probably has a small ballroom on the upper deck somewhere. The diamond-pane windows are common on the camps done before 1900.
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This last one as a whimsical set of gables, one over each rollup boat door. Lake Placid's boathouses house great collections of classic mahogany inboard runabouts, launches, and multi-cockpit speedsters.
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Thanks for sharing those pictures, never realized it was so beautiful there. I am going put it on my must see places to visit.
I would think the ice on the lake would cause havoc with all those boat houses.Looks like a romantic place to live.
Greg in Connecticut
nice paddling tour gene... great way to spend the day.. thanks for sharingMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Geeze Mike, don't you ever sleep?! You replied to me @ 11 or 12 last night and are replying to Gene at 5AM!
jt8
"All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own." -- Goethe
john... what's your point ?
you can nap all day ya knowMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Gorgeous pix - thanks for the view I can't see from here!
Forrest
Gene, that's great stuff, thanks for posting it. Obviously there are some dollars in the local economy. I was in Lake Placid for a few days around 1983 or so, and can't remember how far it was from NYC, but I assume some of your neighbors leave their Central Park West penthouses and buzz up for the weekend.
There are only a couple of boathouses here that I can think of. One that I pass by occasionally has a railway down into the water, and a cart that the boat rides on. Once situated it is towed up by cable into the boathouse a few feet above the high tide mark. Apparently at this point you can barely get a permit for a new dock, due to destruction on the eelgrass that lies just offshore in a lot of places... it's habitat for quite a few species. Out here the only thing more prestigious than your own dock is your own DeHavilland Beaver to go with it.
No Beavers here, but travel a couple hours up into the wilds of northern Quebec, and there are plenty.
The whole time we were canoeing on the lake yesterday, one of these little flying boats was doing a lot of landings and takeoffs.
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That's a Lake Amphibian. There was one down the beach from my folks place up until a few years ago. Don't know what happened to it. The kids sure love watching seaplanes.Tom
Douglasville, GA
Ever see any old seaplanes, like a Catalina PBY or that bi-plnae model, sometimes called Dumbo? If so, I'd love some pics.
The only interesting seaplane I've seen at my lake is a grumman widgeon. It was absolutely perfect, completely restored, and painted in USCG livery. The pilot even wore a vintage USCG flight suit. Had a good chat with him. He sold it soon after though. Too bad.Tom
Douglasville, GA
Beautiful...We do miss the water.....
Gene,
Thanks for the tour. This brings back many good memories of when I was younger and living upstate. Is "the North Pole" still near Whiteface? Or is it now gone the way of Teepee shaped motels and gas stations built to resemble hats or boots? You know, the 40's/50's postwar tourist stuff of the byways?
When I was a kid Dad would take us on long weekend drives from the Syracuse area to the color in the fall and the lakes and pine scents of the summers. Winter was breathtaking and oh so quiet
bum...a bad day at the beach is better than a good day anywhere else... :)
Is "the North Pole" still near Whiteface?
Last time I was up there, last summer I think it, was there........on 86 or 89 or something like that near Wilmimgton?[email protected]
It's Never Too Late To Become What You Might Have Been
Thanks,
A few months ago as we were packing to move I came across an old postcard from there and a couple snapshots of cousins and myself next to the "POLE". All ice on a hot August day.
Those photos of the boathouses are fantastic. The properties are every bit as inviting and magazines just don't do them justice. I've done what Gene has here, that is to canoe around and enjoy the atmosphere. Relaxation at its best. Nice to see that despite the costs, some are able to maintain the history and flavor that makes the area unique....a bad day at the beach is better than a good day anywhere else... :)
Gene:
I gotta ask... Are at least some of these boathouses shared property? Some have 6 slips. I know there are a few people around who have crazy money, but SIX slips??? Even if I was filthy rich I don't think I'd have more than 2 boats - and that being a former boating enthusiast. Maybe it's parking so when their friends come to visit via water? Maybe these boathouses shared between an extended family who aren't close enough to share boats? Maybe property of some kind of club or resort?
Here is a pic from the local real estate multilist. Main house with 5600 sf, 6 bedrooms, 5 1/2 baths, two slip boathouse with 32 x 32 party room and decks above. Listing price: $4,625,000.
This is typical for the lakefront. At that kind of price level, you can probably afford all the antique Chris Crafts and Centurys you want.
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so the level of the lake water doesn't really change much ?
carpenter in transition
so the level of the lake water doesn't really change much ?
That's what I was thinking. Around here most folks build floating docks/boathouses, and none of them come anywhere NEAR the size of those pics.
jt8
"Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Gene -
Those are some awesome pictures. I would love to have something like that, well except for the maintainance, upkeep and expense. (One of my prperties in VA might wind up with one if I can gather the necessary time, money and permits...)
Thanks for taking the time to share them with us.
Don K.
EJG Homes Renovations - New Construction - Rentals
Nope. Look close at the pics. The lake is a little low right now, and at highest, might be another 8 inches up, max.
>> At that kind of price level, you can probably afford all the antique Chris Crafts and Centurys you want. <<
Ah yes! I gotcha. I now have images of furniture grade mahogany and teak masterpieces meticulously maintained by "the help". Interesting how the man of standard means like myself needs help even thinking up ideas of how to spend that kind of money...
Thanks for the pics. Brings back memories of living in Lake George in the 70's . Especially love the classic Adirondack style boathouses.
down here in virginia , on the many creeks of the bay, usually the boathouses are derelict, shabby, nailled together by a handyman, and are quite an eyesore. Most have paint markings on the siding indicating the waterlevel of the hurricanes that have come through. Even if you had enough waterfront to build one, it would be open-sided, be single slip,not over 700 s.f. and unprotested by adjacent property owners.
I grew up in VA.... I guess the difference is tidal waters vs fresh water lakes.
Gene,
Thanks for the great photos. I live on Lake George and one of my favorite pastimes is to drive the boat around the lake and check out the new construction and see how well it is blending in with the old stuff. Some is pretty good and some is just plain ugly.
Last weekend I hiked up to the foundation of the old mansion on the estate of George Knapp near Shelving Rock on the east side of the lake. That must have been quite a house. Next time I get out I will have to bring my camera along and share some photos.
There is a rumor going around town that Derek Jeter just bought a house on the west side of the lake. Ironically, it is just across the lake from the Morse mansion that is owned by one of the owners of the Red Sox.
Ahhhh! Lake George. The big lake where all the Donzis can be found!
We hear things are wild down there. It's all sex, drugs, and rock'n roll compared to up here.
Check out the profile, Gene. 30 Years old AND retired. Must be doing something right. Maybe in my next lifetime. LOL...a bad day at the beach is better than a good day anywhere else... :)