Located on Holmes Lake in New Brunswick, Canada.
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| An example of whole log construction - the camp of Mr. Geo. D. Pratt, New Brunswick. Trowbridge & Ackerman, architects. ***Caption from Country Life - 1914*** |
The lake was long the exclusive fishery of the Pratt family of New York. After being introduced to the area by legendary guide Henry A. Braithwaite, George Dupont Pratt constructed the spectacular log camps at the lake in 1909. Ownership of the camps later passed to his son Sherman Pratt, co-founder of Marineland. wikipedia
Click HERE to see at wikimapia location. Follow wikipedia link for further information on the lake and Pratt camp.
This raises an interesting aside about the Pratts: They were certainly grand and social in their own way, but seem to have studiously avoided, to a man, the dizzy socialite lifestyle to which so many second generation American rich succumbed. Although they kept horses at Pratt Oval in Glen Cove, they are not mentioned among the polo players of the era. And fishing camps and hunting preserves seem to have been the favored vacation locales of the family, with nary a Palm Beach mansion among the lot of them.
ReplyDeletemagnus --
ReplyDeleteDo you really think Pratt would have built this if he'd been able to gain admission to the Restigouche Salmon Club? I don't.
Ancient- and I thought that I had heard of every club- extant and otherwise. This is a new one to me. I'll have to educate myself.
ReplyDeleteI always assumed that the Charles pratt's children were welcomed pretty much everywhere, but perhpas I'm wrong.
magnus --
ReplyDeleteI don't remember seeing a full list of the membership between 1880 (or 1895) and 1920, but you can get some picture of the place and the men who used it here --
http://dspace.hil.unb.ca:8080/handle/1882/36788
http://www.campharmony.ca/about.html
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40611FE3E5C10738DDDA80A94DA415B8684F0D3
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F6071EFD3D541B7A93CAA9178DD85F448884F9
http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/hist/lifelines/liluj01e.shtml
http://www.spinozarods.com/2010/02/camp-restigouche-1894/
http://www.genealogy.restigouche.net/pics.htm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8379801@N03/569599699/
http://restigoucheremembers.wordpress.com/industries/fishing-camps/p343-41/
http://www.musee-mccord.qc.ca/ObjView/CEA/CP252.jpg
http://www.tresorvole.info/StolenTreasure.pdf
Thanks Ancient- fascinating. Sort of like a more narrowly focused South Side Club. Did you notice on the web that there is a "Ristigouche Salmon Club", still in existance?
ReplyDeleteIt can be perilous work to try to forensically parce through the stratas of East Coast WASP Society through its dying gasps in the 1960's, but I have always assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the children of Charles Pratt would have been considered very much at home with the sort of people who would have been 2nd generation Restigouche members: Published guest lists of their parties in the 1920's and 1930's indicate that they kept company with the best of the Long Island swells, for instance, and a perusal of contemporary Social Registers seems to indicate no Club joining issues among the lot of them. I suppose that we'll never know the truth- unless you have some "inside skinny".
magnus --
ReplyDeleteIt's been forty years since I last heard someone from the old patriciate sneer -- ever so gently -- about "Standard Oil money." And even then, he was very old.
(Given enough time, every source of money seems to lose its smell -- as Vespasian knew so well. Pecunia non olet.)
I beleive i went there to clean, and stayed the week back in 1998 or so, for a Mr. Carpenter from Moncton that wanted to make a museum or a resort out of it, the most beautiful palce I wentr in my life with all atifacts and stuff still there, pic's, old furniture made of alder's, ect.... Amazing it was!!!!
ReplyDeleteMy parents had their honeymoon there in 1941 courtesy of Auntie V (Vera Pratt).
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather, Francis Foran, was caretaker here for years. I grew up here. I miss it with my whole heart.
ReplyDelete