top of page
scan0008.jpg

Developments

Lodges, Camps, and Cabins

designed by Kenneth J. Wertheim, Architect

​

".... modern interpretations, reminiscent of the Adirondack style within an Appalachian context."

Development Resource List​

​

Ken is on the Preferred Architects List for the following developments in Western North Carolina:

​

•    Lake James 1780

•  The Settings of Black Mountain

•  Avery Park, Arden, NC

•  The Ramble

•  Southcliff

•  Creston

•  Old Wildlife Club at Lake James

•  Balsam Preserve

•  Cliffs at Walnut Cove

•  Cheshire Village

•  Cliffs at High Carolina

•  Sun Dance Ridge, Black Mtn

​

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

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.

sagamore-bw-jpg.gif

~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."

bottom of page