Putnam Camp

Putnam Camp is a group of farm buildings and rustic cabins set beneath Giant Mountain in Saint Huberts, in the Keene Valley of New York's Adirondack High Peaks. The core is the Beede farmstead, established around 1850 and bought in the mid-1870s by members of the Bowditch, Putnam and James families of Boston. The 218-acre site is divided into Lower Camp and Upper Camp, arranged around an old logging road and a sloping meadow. The oldest buildings are the timber-framed farmhouse and barn, which later became a woodshop. Most other structures are simple frame cabins with board-and-batten siding, log posts and twig trim, built between the 1870s and 1905. They include the Shanty, the open-air Stoop, the Bungalow and the Ark. Eleven buildings and one structure contribute to the district. The camp was used by a circle of Boston physicians and academics, among them William James, Henry Bowditch and the Putnam brothers. It retains a high degree of integrity, with only modest and sympathetic alterations.