Camp Santanoni

About this property

The Santanoni Preserve was once a private estate of approximately 13,000 acres (53 km2) in the Adirondack Mountains, and now is the property of the State of New York, at Newcomb, New York. Santanoni Preserve was established by Robert C. Pruyn (1847–1934), a prominent Albany banker and businessman. Acquiring about 12,900 acres (52.2 km2) in the Town of Newcomb, just south of the Adirondack High Peaks, Pruyn employed the distinguished architect Robert H. Robertson (1849–1914) to design a summer residential complex. Robert C. Pruyn's heirs in 1953 sold the Santanoni Preserve to the Melvin family, leaders in the business and professional community of Syracuse, New York. The Melvin family continued to enjoy the camp for almost twenty more years, although maintaining it on a simpler scale. In 1971, one of the Melvins' grandchildren, eight-year-old Douglas Legg, disappeared in the forest at Santanoni and was never seen again. The family, not caring to return to the scene of this tragedy, quickly contracted with the newly formed Adirondack Conservancy Committee of The Nature Conservancy to purchase the entire Santanoni Preserve. The furnishings were removed, and the Conservancy then resold the property to the state of New York for incorporation into the State Forest Preserve. For two decades Camp Santanoni buildings were inadequately maintained by the state, since the intent, as required by the Article Fourteen of the New York State Constitution (providing for retention of Adirondack wilderness) was to remove improvements in order to return the Santanoni Preserve to a "forever wild' condition. A residential complex of about forty-five buildings within the Santanoni Preserve, Camp Santanoni was one of the earliest examples of the "Great Camps of the Adirondacks". The complex now is known as the Camp Santanoni Historic Area and is a National Historic Landmark. At the time of completion, Camp Santanoni was regarded as the grandest of all such Adirondack camps. Camp Santanoni has three main groupings of buildings:The Gate Lodge complex; the farm complex; and the Main Camp. The Robert H. Robertson buildings for the Main Camp were built in 1892–93. The farm buildings were designed around 1902 by Edward Burnett, the leading farm designer of the time. The Gate Lodge was designed in 1905 by William Adams Delano of the New York City architectural firm of Delano and Aldrich. The Gate Lodge complex is situated at the edge of the hamlet of Newcomb, included an impressive gate Lodge with a monumental, stone, gateway arch and six staff bedrooms, a caretakers home, and assorted barns, wagon sheds and other buildings.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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