Resort hotel · Lake George, New York · Built c. 1873–1912
Wiawaka Holiday House
A lakeshore holiday house on Lake George founded in 1903 by Mary Wiltsie Fuller and Katrina Trask so that Troy's women factory workers could afford a vacation, set among Second Empire cottages of the old Crosbyside hotel.
History
The southeastern shore of Lake George near the old forts was listed in early tax rolls as the "garrison ground." By the 1850s it held the United States Hotel, which briefly housed the Lake George Young Ladies Institute in 1855. F.G. Crosby then took it over, enlarged it, and by the mid-1870s his Crosbyside resort could take about two hundred guests and kept a dock and a small fleet of pleasure boats. In 1873 he built three Second Empire cottages for guests who preferred not to mix with the main hotel's crowd, and about 1876 a matching three-story house for his own family. After Crosby the business declined, and in 1902 Katrina Trask, the poet and philanthropist of Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, bought the property.
Trask turned it over to her friend Mary Wiltsie Fuller (1862–1943), an unmarried Troy heiress whose family's Fuller & Warren Company made stoves. Fuller knew the long hours and bad food of the city's collar and textile workers and was active in the Episcopal Girls' Friendly Society. In 1903 she opened Wiawaka, a name she understood to mean "the great spirit of woman," in the old Crosbyside buildings, with board kept low and a board of women in charge. It was soon opened to self-supporting women of any denomination, and art students from the New York League also came. A boathouse called the House of Trix, Trask's rustic lodge Amitola (later Wakonda), and further cottages and service buildings followed by 1912; the old hotel itself has since been lost. The nomination found the place still serving its founding purpose 95 years on.
“Although many people familiar with the history of Wakonda Lodge insist that it was designed by Stanford White, no documentation in support of this claim has yet been found.”
Architecture
Three Crosbyside buildings survive along the shore: Fuller House, Crosby's family house of about 1876, three stories with a mansard roof, and Mayflower and Rose Cottages of 1873 in the same Second Empire manner; a third cottage burned long ago. The House of Trix, about 1904, is a Shingle Style boathouse over the water, later floored over for a recreation room. Wakonda Lodge, about 1905, is an Adirondack-style lodge with board-and-batten siding, built for Trask's artist guests. A boathouse, Pine Cottage, an icehouse, a 1912 barn and a 1940s gazebo complete the historic group; a Japanese-inspired Lakehouse was added in 1963–64.
What to look for
- Mansard-roofed Fuller House on the shore
- Paired Second Empire cottages, Mayflower and Rose
- House of Trix boathouse built out over the water
- Board-and-batten Wakonda Lodge at the north end
- Shore marker for the sunken bateaux
Setting
Wiawaka occupies about sixty acres on the southeastern shore of Lake George, a short distance from the village of Lake George and the site of Fort William Henry. Route 9L divides the property: on the lake side are lawns, big pines, footpaths and a rocky shore; across the road, old garden fields give way to woods climbing French Mountain. The 18th-century Wiawaka Bateaux shipwreck site lies just offshore.
Timeline
- 1855United States Hotel leased to the Lake George Young Ladies Institute
- 1858F.G. Crosby reopens the enlarged hotel as Crosbyside
- 1873Mayflower, Rose and Pine Cottages built
- c. 1876Crosby family house (Fuller House) built
- 1902Katrina Trask buys the property
- 1903Mary Wiltsie Fuller opens Wiawaka Holiday House
- 1998Listed on the National Register
Where sources differ
- Wikipedia says Crosby bought the hotel in 1848; the nomination places his purchase in the late 1850s.
- The attribution of Wakonda Lodge to Stanford White, and Wikipedia's report that Georgia O'Keeffe stayed there, are undocumented.
- The meaning of the name Wiawaka is given by the house's founders; its derivation is not independently confirmed.
