Let’s Go Orange

By Robert Engel, Historian

A Cache of Sagamore Documents Discovered at Syracuse University

Cover of a Sept 1941 inventory of all Sagamore Lodge buildings.

Sagamore inspires great conversations.

Margaret Emerson would invite interesting people to gather where the bustle and scrutiny of modern life was reliably absent. Sagamore’s lakeside setting and rustic design, and the vigorous activities in which all guests were obliged to participate, all inspired lively discourse.

Margaret would encourage her guests to shed their armor. Then she would arm them with paddles, rackets, and mallets. Picture Gene Tierney and Howard Hughes racing a canoe, badly, with a dozen equally eminent spectators all in uproarious laughter. After an excellent dinner, their hostess would let the colloquy soar. 

Four decades after marrying her beloved Alfred Vanderbilt, Margaret accepted that she had to let Sagamore go. She gathered her children to ask if they wanted to keep the camp and she must not have heard a yes. Perhaps a factor was the great blowdown of 1950; the woods around the lake were a dreadful mess.

Beginning in December 1953 a series of deed transfers, each requiring the payment of “One Dollar, lawful money of the United States,” conveyed ownership of the camp, its contents, land, and lake to Syracuse University – more specifically, to SU’s University College, a pioneer in continuing education and lifelong learning. Rather than sell the camp, Margaret’s gift to a prominent and nearby university would ensure that great conversations at Sagamore would resume.

When Margaret Emerson presented the deeds to SU Chancellor William Tolley, she also donated documents that would help the new owners to understand the timeline of Sagamore’s development. In 1975, after 21 years of stewardship, SU sold Sagamore’s lower camp complex to the National Humanistic Education Center (NHEC,) soon renamed The Sagamore Institute of the Adirondacks. Since then, camp historians have searched the SU libraries for Sagamore documents without much success. 

Now the University’s archives are improved and Joan Nicholson, a SU Trustee and longtime friend of Great Camp Sagamore, gave it another try. “Robert, you should come to see what I’ve found.” One pandemic later, I did just that. And, oh boy.

Sagamore trustee Wanda Burch and her husband Ron, both retired history museum professionals, joined me on a wintery day in the Special Collections Reading Room in the Bird Library to start on 10 boxes of materials. We felt like seven-year-olds on Christmas morning. The following are some highlights:

• A copy of a Dec 1897 indenture allowing William West Durant to construct a spring house and bury a water pipe on land he had just sold to J.P. Morgan as part of neighboring Camp Uncas. Sagamore used this water system until the 1990s. 

• A map of the Sagamore property, surveyed in 1895 and copied in 1911, roughly indicating the locations of the “New Road to Shed (soon renamed Sagamore) Lake,” the farm and “Sugar Camp,” and the first camp buildings.

• An Aug 1916 map of “Sewage Disposal Plants, Additional Water Supply, and Electric Light and Power Lines” for Sagamore Lodge, also indicating camp buildings.

• Various Vanderbilt and/or SU period interior photographs showing the Dining Hall, Main Lodge, Playhouse and Bowling Alley.

Dining Hall, c.1953, showing the c.1920 Jacob Doll piano donated back to Sagamore in 2020 by Linda Kaiser of Syr.

• Inventories and/or appraisals of camp contents:

  • A c.1930, 45-page camp-wide inventory. A detail includes 46 items found in Margaret’s “Medicine Closet.”

  • A  Dec 1953 appraisal made prior to the transfer to SU.

  • A c.1954 appraisal made after the transfer to SU.

  • An Oct 1975 inventory indicating which objects were “Vanderbilt.”

  • An Aug 1976 list of items to be sold at auction excluding those purchased by the NHEC to remain in camp.

  • An Oct 1976 final inventory of the Sagamore auction.

1941 photo of the Sagamore split-level greenhouse. The foundation exists adjacent to the current guest parking lot.

1941 photo of Sagamore’s Hog House, located behind the Upper Camp greenhouse. The hogs had a fireplace?

• A Sept 1941 inventory of all Sagamore buildings with attached exterior photos and map indicating locations, values, and conditions, created for fire insurance purposes. The document includes several buildings, listed below, that have since been removed or destroyed. * Indicates buildings on land now owned by NYS:

  • Launch House on South Inlet*

  • Large Tool House

  • Small Tool House

  • Open Wagon Shed

  • Hog House

  • Cow Barn

  • Garden Tool House

  • Greenhouse

  • Gatehouse*

  • Garage at Gate*

  • Wagon Shed at Farm*

  • Milking Shed at Farm*

  • Maple Syrup Shed at Farm*

  • Frame Storage Shed

1941 map indicating 43 Sagamore buildings then extant and in use. 16 of these no longer exist.

• Various deeds and legal documents pertaining to the transfer of Sagamore to Syracuse University, 1953-54.

• A Dec 1953 survey map of buildings and grounds in lower camp commissioned by SU.

• Documents establishing and describing the University College 6-week Summer Reading Camp program held at Sagamore for high school grads entering college, 1955-72.

• Various correspondents describing logging on Sagamore land during SU ownership.

• A Dec 1955 documents describing the need to construct a fire escape on the Main Lodge lakeside and others describing various construction and maintenance projects.

• Various correspondence regarding the attempted sale of Sagamore by SU, first to private interests and eventually to the NHEC and New York State.

• A list of Aug 1976 auction sales results indicating item, buyer, and price.

• A list of 301 auction attendees with driver’s license ID, address, and phone number.

Sagamore Main Lodge, c.1960 group photo of a Syracuse University sponsored conference.