Origin of the Adirondack Style The end of the Civil War marked a change in attitude for the people of this country. It was a significant change in American thinking.  We had looked upon the wilderness as something to be tamed.  Land was cleared for the plow. Trees were cut and floated down river to meet the needs of rapidly growing cities.. Trees were used to build roads and bridges.    Except as a resource, we had not looked upon wilderness as a good thing. People were already migrating to the cities, looking for better jobs.  A growing urban population was developing that was removed from the harsh rural experience. With this came a growing professional class with money and for some, more leisure time. The great outdoors was about to be rediscovered.  Discovered by writers and artists.  Thomas Cole was one of the first.  From the Adirondack Mountains he painted a piece called Scene From ‘The Last of the Mohicans.’  It was inspired by his friend James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, The Last of The Mohicans. Winsow Homer, widely know for his outdoor paintings, was another artist who spent time in the Adirondacks. For about four decades, starting 1870, Homer made many trips here to dramatize the outdoor experience. As artists became drawn to the area a style of landscape painting developed and by 1879  was referred to as the Hudson River School.  It was considered by many critics to be the first American style of painting.  After the Civil War photography became extremely popular. It created an interest in all aspects of American life, including landscapes rarely seen by most people. Senica Ray Stoddard. a long time resident of the Adirondacks, was by mid 1870s, exhibiting his photos in galleries  in major northeastern cities.  To wealthy patrons his landscape prints were quite popular. And soon after he was receiving corporate commissions. One of his special projects was producing 360 degree panoramic views of the region. One of his patrons was Thomas Clark Durant, a railroad developer who saw the potential of building a retreat for wealthy urban New Yorkers. With a railroad and stage coach line already in place Durant began planning.  He envisioned hotels and resorts where people could experience the outdoors while staying in luxury accommodations. He also saw the time when guests would be transported from cities like Philadelphia and New York in the comfort of Pullman sleeper cars. In 1874 a New York newspaper reported that "...the painter, William West Durant, was summoned home from Europe by his father, railroad tycoon Thomas Clark Durant, to help in promoting the Adirondacks as a tourist attraction." William was just 18 at the time. A relative, Charles Durant had just opened a guest house on Blue Mountain Lake.  It could accommodate 500 guests, had steam heat, an elevator and electricity in every room. This was quite modern, especially for visitors to a wilderness resort.   Features surely appreciated by guests after a trip that took them by rail, stage coach, and for some, boat on a 24 hour trip over rough terrain .  William West Durant set to work designing and overseeing the building of a compound on the lake.  He embraced a  get-away-from-it style. He was very successful in developing this rustic fusion of sticks, bark covered branches and natural materials into an appealing concept.  He wasn't alone, however, others such as architect Frederick Law Omstead had incorporated similar ideas into his plan for New York’s Central Park.  Visitors who came to Blue Mountain Lake were taken with the architecture as much as the landscape.  It wasn't long before more resorts were going up on nearby lakes.  The area began to develop a reputation as one of the most fashionable resort spots in the U.S.  The Adirondack area and especially the area around Blue Mountain Lake was attracting considerable attention.   .  The rustic style that William Durant had so skillfully developed became the favorite with visitors. Well-to-do families who came for a vacation returned with their servants and were hiring architects to design summer homes.  It was a popular trend to have them furnished in what was called the Adirondack style.  This was a look that required the talents of skilled builders and artisans who were drawn to the area by a market created for handcrafted furnishings. Durant has been given a lot of credited for developing a very popular look that would become known as the Adirondack style. So strong were the dynamics of Adirondack region between the end of the Civil War and the early twentieth century that its influence was projected throughout the country. This beautiful wilderness setting produced a lot of work from creative people.  Writers, photographers, painters, artisans, were taken by the experience and generated a great deal of work that caught the public interest.  Wealthy families who were building summer homes wanted them custom furnished. Not in the high fashion of European tradition or mass produced but in the rustic style of the Adirondack resorts they had seen in earlier visits. Out of all this emerged one item that has come to represent the region and the popular perception of outdoor leisure living.  This was a chair and strangely enough started its life with a different name.  It was in Westport, a little town to the east of Blue Mountain Lake that gets the credit for the now famous chair.  It seems that Harry Bunnell received a patent on his chair in 1905.  He called it the Westport Plank chair.  There is an example of this model in the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake NY.  It had a narrow back and very wide arms.  It is very easy to see the similarity between this and the modern day Adirondack chair. Story has it that Thomas Lee, owner of the Westport Mountain Spring, first put together prototypes of a lawn chair that he envisioned for his vacation home in Westport, on the western shore of lake Champlain.  He tinkered with several ideas, nailing boards together and testing his prototypes on family members.  Each prototype was made from a single pine plank and featured the characteristically wide armrests that have become the hallmark of the Adirondack chair. In 1903 after arriving at a pleasing design for the "Westport plank chair," he offered it to Harry Bunnell, a carpenter friend, who was in need of a winter income. Bunnell quickly realized the chair was the perfect item to sell to Westport's summer residents.  Without apparently asking Lee's permission, Bunnell filed for and received a patent.  Bunnell went on to manufacture his plank chairs for the next twenty years. His chairs were all signed and made of hemlock. Original colors were green or a medium dark brown. And so one of the most famous of American chairs, a symbol of an American lifestyle, has transcended to an icon.  Once known by a different name it is now synonymous with the word Adirondack.

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