The Great Camps of the Adirondacks were never meant for winter vacations. When they were built in the early 19th century, their owners—Gilded Age magnates from William Avery Rockefeller, to Alfred Vanderbilt, to American President Calvin Coolidge—considered them summer escapes. Upstate New York was the contemporary equivalent of the Hamptons, with glimmering lakes instead of sandy beaches and sprawling log cabins in place of supersize seaside cottages.
A few of these extraordinary lakeside homes are still available for bookings during warm-weather months. Lake Kora, the immaculately restored estate of Teddy Roosevelt’s onetime lieutenant governor, Timothy Woodruff, costs nearly $20,000 per night in peak season and can be booked only from July to October as a full buyout; properties such as the Vanderbilt-owned Sagamore and Coolidge’s White Pine Camp have become less glitzy with age, catering to locals on quick weekend trips. But the Point, the 11-room, 75-acre resort on Upper Lake Saranac once owned by William Avery Rockefeller Jr. (John D. Rockefeller's grandson) has just undergone a meticulous, multimillion-dollar restoration that makes it every bit as magical in the snow as in the sun.