The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness

Adirondack Style

In the northeast region of New York State lies the Adirondack Park: six million breathtaking acres of natural beauty. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, America's most prominent families came to the area to build the expansive summer retreats known as the Great Camps. Built and decorated with the region's natural resources, the camps reflected the serenity and indelible power of their surroundings—and the rustic Adirondack style was born. People are once again flocking to the area — building new vacation retreats or restoring existing camps — and creating fresh new perspectives on this classic American style. Author Ann Stillman O'Leary takes you through the rich and interesting history of the Adirondacks with an in-depth look at how its trademark building and decorating style is being interpreted today. The book's introduction, written by Elizabeth Folwell, the editor of Adirondack Life magazine, provides an overview of this distinctive area and the original owners and builders of the Great Camps. The remaining chapters explore the region's finest camps, both inside and out. More than 200 full-color and historical black-and-white photographs highlight all the elements unique to this style, from exterior stonework and twig filligree to interior fabrics and wall decor. A featured section shows how Adirondack furniture uses every bit of the tree, from root and burl to bark and branch, with amazing results. A thorough source guide identifies architects, builders, interior designers, manufacturers, craftspeople, and retail stores featuringcamp merchandise, and a list of area lodging lets you experience the Adirondacks firsthand. Adirondack Style, the first book to take a comprehensive look at rustic design today,celebrates — in words and images — a style that is being referenced in homes from Maine to California.


Early Days in the Adirondacks: The Photographs of Seneca Ray Stoddard
$31.96
Beginning more than a century ago, a photographer named Seneca Ray Stoddard explored and documented the Adirondacks in a series of brilliant black-and-white images. This book presents the first major collection of that work. Stoddard, who grew up on the outskirts of the region, came to know its varied glories by hiking, camping, and canoeing its length and breadth. He pictured not just the softly rounded peaks of the area, the mirrored lakes, and pine-decked groves, but the burgeoning and popular hotels, the local guides with their indigenous craft (the elegant Adirondack guide boats), the loggers, hunters, and legions of rusticators who rushed up each summer from New York City, Philadelphia, and elsewhere to experience a wild and beautiful America that was already disappearing. John Wilmerding sets the scene by placing Stoddard's work in the artistic context of its time. In her important survey of Stoddard's achievement, Jeanne Winston Adler traces the artist's life and times, from a boyhood near Albany and Troy, through an apprenticeship as a decorative painter of railway carriages, to his growing mastery of photographic technique.


My Grampa's Woods: The Adirondacks
$11.65

In the Wilderness
$9.95
Cited in Adirondack Life as one of the twenty-five most collectible books about the Adirondacks ever to appear, these essays were first published in book form in 1878. Warner's main theme is the small, often-ludicrous figure that the human being cuts in the wilderness. His urbane satire takes the starch out of 'the tin-can and paper-collar tourists' who were beginning to flock to the Adirondacks. Warner's love of nature, combined with his humor and social satire, makes this book as good a read now as it was more than a century ago.


Adirondack Furniture and the Rustic Tradition
$29.95
Published in 1987 to rave reviews and substantial sales, this bible ofAdirondack rustic furniture—an essential resource for dealers, collectors, designers, and hobbyists—is now reissued in an affordable paperback format. The book illustrates over 300 of the finest pieces of this enormously popular style, from elaborate sideboards ornamented with twig mosaics to chairs and beds made of gnarled branches. To thumb through this book is to appreciate immediately why the Boston Globe declared it "a wonderful present for anyone interested in the rustic look or for those furnishing a vacation home."


Waterfalls of the Adirondacks and Catskills
$32.95
Ancient and mythic, the mountainous Adirondack and Catskill regions of New York are rich with storied character and cultures. Focusing on the sparkling waterfalls and rugged cuts and cloves of these territories, accomplished photographers Derek Doeffinger and Keith Boas capture the intense appeal of each district as well as the wild, often elusive but always compelling drama of their beauty.



Exposing the Wilderness: Early-Twentieth-Century Adirondack Postcard Photographers
$39.95
Exposing the Wilderness explores New York State's Adirondack Mountains through the lives and images of six early-twentieth-century postcard photographers who left a revealing visual legacy of the region and its culture just after the turn of the century.

Life with Noah: Stories and Adventures of Richard Smith with Noah John Rondeau
$30.00

Our Wilderness: How the People of New York Found, Changed, and Preserved the Adirondacks
$9.95
Describes how the Adirondack Park of New York State was created in 1892 to preserve over a million acres of land and keep it "forever wild."

Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks
$26.95
Rich with illustrations from the collection of the Adirondack Museum, Contested Terrain is a comprehensive introduction to the history of the Adirondacks. In it, Philip G. Terrie explores the conflict that has been debated in this region for centuries: is the Adirondack country a place to be exploited for its natural resources or is it an area to be preserved for its natural beauty and open spaces? Terrie introduces the key players who have shaped the region and its use, from the early settlers, guides, loggers, and genteel nineteenth-century sportsmen to the current year-round residents, wealthy downstate landholders, preservationists, and developers. And the debate continues today. The diversity within the Adirondack Park - from downtown Lake George to the remotest corner of the West Canada Lakes Wilderness Area - emphasizes the need for a lucid, humane, and environmentally sensitive agenda for the future of the Adirondacks.


Don Williams' inside the Adirondack Blue Line

$16.95