An Elegant Wilderness: Great Camps and Grand Lodges of the Adirondacks, 1855 - 1935 by Gladys Montgomery, recounts the story of the private retreats of the Gilded age industrial rich who traveled north from New York City to experience wilderness. Light-years away from other upscale resorts, the Adirondacks was a place where constricting social proprieties relaxed; women shed their corsets to hike, hunt, fish, and play tennis; and children learned to appreciate the great outdoors. Transported in private Pullman cars, wealthy urbanites arrived with chefs from the city's premier restaurants, retinues of servants, tennis and singing coaches, chauffeurs and secretaries, and cadres of famous guests.
On the shores of the region's shimmering lakes, in high style rustic cabins with dozens of bedrooms, two storey fireplaces, icehouses and boathouses, railroad tycoon Collis P. Huntington, mining magnate Daniel Guggenheim, financiers J. Pierpont Morgan and Otto Kahn, New York governor Levi Morton, Teddy Roosevelt, and philosopher William James relaxed, networked, and philosophised. Powerful, brilliant and wealthy women camp owners included Lucy Carnegie, Margaret Emerson (Vanderbilt), and Marjorie Merriweather Post.
Published by Acanthus Press in collaboration with The Adirondack Museum, An Elegant Wilderness combines architectural, cultural history and biography, illustrated with archival photographs of rustic lodges and their eccentric, lavish interiors, boating trips, fishing contests, and costume parties, many published for the first time.
Gladys Montgomery is an award-winning writer and editor. The author of five books and the founding editor of Berkshire Living Home + Garden, she has penned more than 200 magazine features about architecture, design, antiques and historic buildings, which have appeared in regional, national and international publications. In 2007, she transposed this expertise into a real estate career with The Kinderhook Group. She lives in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
