A comfortable porch with wicker rockers is the perfect place to enjoy a book in the shade.
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Lakeside Rustic
Through careful renovations, an architect saves a treasured camp in the heart of New Hampshire

When architect Chris Williams first drove down a remote dirt road to see this lakeside camp in central New Hampshire, he was under clear instructions to tear it down and replace it with a new $3 million vacation home for his New York clients. As his tires crunched over pine needles, Chris, who has been an active member of the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance for 25 years, knew he had stumbled upon a treasure beneath the towering old pines.

Christopher P. Williams Architects of Meredith N.H., is a ten-person firm that has completed more than 700 architectural projects through the past few decades, many of them for lakeside properties. Chris knew from experience that his first job would be to convince his clients to save and restore the treasure they unknowingly had. “To me it just reeked of quintessential turn-of-the-century camp,” Chris explains.

Nestled deep in the heart of the Lakes Region, the house is a classic example of the Adirondack craze that hit the region in the late 1800s. Enticed north by artists’ depictions of an exciting and untamed wilderness, wealthy city dwellers sought a change of scenery as far from civilization as new rail lines would take them. Grand hotels and lodges sprang up overnight, but for those who could afford it, summer “camps” were the rage.

To be fair, when Chris’ clients had first bought the camp, the six-bedroom house had been nearly untouched for almost a hundred years, except for dangerously installed electrical wiring and an unappealing 1950s-style kitchen. The smoke-darkened wood walls, small windows, musty rooms, and bat-infested rafters must have seemed more than ready for the wrecking ball.

With some imagination and what must have been no small faith in their architect, the owners agreed to begin a careful renovation and restoration project. Chris enlisted the construction help of White House Construction, Inc. “Our project was in two phases,” he explains, “the first was restoration and renovation, the next was a small addition. Our overall goal was basically to have it look original.”

Original in this case meant returning the house to something of what it must have felt like when it was first designed and built in 1906 by Boston architect Joseph Randolph Coolidge. Coolidge, who studied architecture at the famed Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1891, must have been enchanted by the north-facing peninsula. His design was a flattened V anchored at an octagonal great room. Like the prow of a great ship, the house juts toward the lake as if to set sail. Unlike more traditional homes of the time, Chris explains, the V shape allowed rooms from all areas of the house to enjoy a view of the lake.

Always aware of the lake, Coolidge designed an oversized screened porch to wrap snugly against the house between the great room and the lake. And the crowning brilliance of this porch was that he designed the lake-facing walls behind it to lift, windows and all, on a pulley system, thus extending the size of the already large porch into the interior of the home.

The house also has three separate sleeping porches. “Sleeping porches were one of the things that were quite common in the 1890s to World War I,” says Chris. “It was very rustic; everyone wanted to sleep outside.” Perched at various corners, two of these exposed sleeping nooks overlook the lake while another looks into woods, giving it a tree-house feel. But of decks there is only one. Chris dryly comments, “I don’t know if the mosquitoes were worse in 1906, but there was only a small deck.”

As one of the early structures on the lake, the house’s construction had been a challenge in 1906 because there were no roads within two miles of the small peninsula. Materials and supplies could only be brought in during the frigid winter months when the lake froze solid enough to support horse-drawn sleds weighed down beneath loads of lumber.

For the camp’s rehabilitation, Chris and his team oversaw an enormous range of both large and small projects over a two-year period to bring out and enhance the original beauty—and livability––of the camp. Plumbing was updated, wiring was replaced and “boxed”––it had previously been exposed in the open bays––and the wood walls were cleaned and brightened. Windows were repaired and replaced where necessary, and doors and wall angles adjusted to let in more light.

“On the exposed wood you can see the hand and foot prints on the walls and ceilings,” Chris says. “I’d never seen it before except occasionally in these old camps. The carpenters had been working with oils and over time the prints emerged.” When a new wall was constructed Chris asked the builders to dip their hands and boots in oil occasionally as they went along, with the expectation that the new walls would eventually match the old.

The kitchen saw the most change. “The kitchen was very 50s, we wanted it to look like it had in 1906,” says Chris. That included installing new cabinets with chicken-wire fronts and an Elmira cook stove and a slate sink to give it an authentic feel. A new addition off the back of the kitchen gave the house some needed modern amenities such as a laundry and additional food storage.

Center Harbor interior designer Dawn Heiderer has been hired to work on the camp in recent years, helping to update fabrics and furnishings. What appeals to her about this house is that it was built for families. “I think it was designed for the ages,” says Dawn, whose favorite feature is the swing-up walls that are a surprise to every new visitor.

When working on freshening the interiors on an old home like this, Dawn says, “The thought process is to understand that the old camp is a family member, one that is so wonderful to return to.” She does this by selecting fabrics and lighting that are updated and fresh yet respectful of the heritage of the house.

“The mystique of lake living is that it is all about making memories.” Dawn says, “The memories accumulate and grow and become more treasured throughout the years.