MOUNTAIN ARCHITECTURE
Kenneth J. Wertheim, AIA, Architect
Asheville, North Carolina
Development Resource List • Sun Dance Ridge, Black Mtn • Lake James 1780 • The Crossings at Cane Creek • The Settings of Black Mountain • Grey Rock at Lake Lure • The Ramble • Southcliff • Creston • Old Wildlife Club at Lake James • Balsam Preserve • Cliffs at Walnut Cove • Cheshire Village • Cliffs Carolina Highlands Ken is on the "Preferred Architects List" for these developments. |
Real Estate Investment Resource List: • NCREI |
Real Estate Broker Debbie Wertheim Broker, NAR • Land • Timberpeg homes |
“Thousands of nerves shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home, that wilderness is a necessity... and that mountain peaks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and rivers but as fountains of life.”
John Muir 1898 |
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Excerpts from “Adirondack Lodges Rich in History and Nature” by Jill Schensul, Journal Sentinel Inc. 2002 “It must have been the call of the loons. "Or so I thought as I stood on the shore at Great Camp Sagamore, watching the mist crawl over the lake at dawn. This mournful and timeless call, I thought as it died away into the grayness, is what drew people here in the first place. It had to be something compelling to drag the fabulously wealthy away from their elegant apartments in New York City and their mine-is-bigger-than-yours “cottages” in Newport, R.I. There had to be some powerful reason for the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, the Whitneys and the Astors to brave 12-hour train rides and teeth-rattling carriage rides to come to play in the Adirondack “camps” early in this century. "The name camps, though, is misleading. These industrialists and financiers were not sleeping in canvas tents or eating out of cans. Society’s elite arrived with luggage enough to hold a different outfit for each meal. They also brought the best chefs, best sherries and a cadre of servants often outnumbering them 3-to-1. They came for the simplicity extolled by Emerson and Thoreau, but were not about to get their fingernails dirty in the process. "Today, in the shadows of pine trees and high peaks of the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park, their legacy remains. Now, a new generation can drive a mere five hours north of New York City to find solace in the tousled forests and among the romantic loons – and perhaps taste the lifestyle those millionaires enjoyed.” |
Lodges, Camps & Cabins
Designs by Ken Wertheim
".... modern interpretations, reminiscent of the Adirondack style within an Appalachian context".
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| Old Orchard Club House & Pavilion, NC Design by Kenneth J, Wertheim Rendering by Loraine Plaxico |
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"The Cabin in the forest, on the banks of a quiet stream or buried in the wilderness back of behind, is an expression of man's desire to escape the exactions of civilization and secure rest and seclusion by a return to the primitive". ~ William A. Burnette 1934 |
Cabins at Creston, Creston Mountain, NC Design by Kenneth J. Wertheim |
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| Bramblewood Lodge at Ashton Woods | |
Bear Camp Museum, Black Mountain, NC |
Bear Camp Museum, Black Mountain, NC |
"Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments vanish in a few centuries." ~ John Muir |
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Bear Camp Museum, Black Mountain, NC |
Bear Camp Museum, Black Mountain, NC |
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An Architect influenced by the Great Camps of the Adirondacks and the Lodges of the National Parks. Ken grew up in upstate N.Y. near the Canadian border. His parents were both from Europe and he is first generation American. As a child the family often vacationed and camped at state parks in the Allegheny mountains, the Finger Lakes region and the Adirondacks of N.Y. Staying in simple rustic cabins, lodges and camps, taking long hikes in the forest wilderness as a youngster fostered Ken’s appreciation for nature and a special interest in the “Park Architecture”. When Ken and his wife Debbie married over thirty years ago, they honeymooned in the places he loved as a child: Seneca Lodge at Watkins Glen, Cayuga Lake and Saranac Lake and Lake Placid, home to several remaining Great Camps of the Adirondacks. Over the years, Ken and Debbie have traveled to nearly all the National Parks of the west, staying at many of the famous park inns such as Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone in Wyoming, El Tovar at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite in California. And still today they enjoy vacationing at the national parks with their children and have added a few new places to their favorite places to stay: Disney’s Wilderness Lodge in Florida, and Disney’s Grand California Hotel in California. Today Ken’s architectural practice located in the mountains of Asheville, NC specializes in “timber framed homes” and he continues to have a special interest in designing projects which are modern interpretations reminiscent of architecture from the National Parks and the Great Camps of the Adirondacks. |
Definitions Parkitecture: A rustic architectural design style dedicated to celebrating nature by blending structures with their majestic surroundings. Books Great Camps of the Adirondacks, author Harvey H. Kaiser
author Harvey H. Kaiser – Southwest
author Harriet H. Kaiser – Far West
References National Park Architecture www.nationalparkarchitecture.com |
Cabins at Creston, North Carolina |
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~Great Camp Sagamore ~ by Jill Schensul, Journal Sentinel Inc. 2002 “But at night, after the fabulous meals in the dining room, the great room beckoned. Here families retired en masse. The kids played board games, and teenagers shot pool, and parents and grandparents snuggled with a book on a couch under the soft light of an antique lamp. A group of newly made young friends might be swinging on the large sofa suspended in front of the fireplace. And late each night, many of us would bundle up and go outside to watch the stars, looking into the Milky Way, just the way Emerson and the Vanderbilts and MacDougald had done. The only difference is that today an occasional satellite slowly floats across the face of the constellations. On our last night, we took a canoe out and paddled away from the warm lights of the lodge. On Cranford Island, a family was gathered around a campfire. For a while we could hear their soft laughter, and the cold night air was filled with the delicious scent of burning logs. Finally, we were away from all vestiges of civilization, floating to a halt in a small pond whose shoreline we could barely see in the near-moonless night." |
SAGAMORE ~ Historic Adirondack Great Camp Yankee Magazine |
