Pritchett Camp (Uncle Hiram's Lodge, Birney Camp)

This large Shingle Style camp was built for the Birney family in 1912. An architectural and cultural landmark for the Caspian Lake summer community, the camp's builders were the locally famous Perrin brothers, who ran a mechanics and woodworking shop in Greensboro village where they made everything from butter tubs to carriages. They also built a number of finely styled camps and other structures in the area between 1890 and 1927. Here, they designed a long, simple, one-and-a-half-story camp with a deep full-front porch, a gabled central pavilion with flared eaves, and a double-door entrance. The projecting pavilion creates the interior space for a “great room” in the Adirondack tradition. Open to the rafters, the room has twin stairways at its rear and a gallery that leads to bedrooms in each wing and a view of the lake from the tripartite window. With its shingled walls and (formerly) shingled posts, the porch is similar to those found on a number of other fine camps and perhaps also the handiwork of the Perrins. Hiram Moffet purchased the camp in 1923 and ran it as Uncle Hiram's Lodge until 1933. S. Whitney Landon purchased the inn in 1933 and soon after established a lake social tradition of playing the radio on his porch on Saturday nights for a crowd of summer residents and visitors in canoes.