Living Space
- Bedrooms 20
- Bathrooms 18
- Sleeps 35
Amenities
Toiletries, Hair Dryers
- Handicapped facilities
- Cribs & high chairs available for children
- Complimentary high-speed wireless internet access throughout
- Please note: Cell service is unavailable in the mountains
- Direct dial phone lines in each guestroom
- Telephone charges are complimentary within the US
- Bedrooms supplied with signature robes, sundry items, hair dryer
- Televisions in some rooms but a large screen TV is in the Media Room in The Playhouse
- Radio/alarm clocks
- Inclusive of all meal and non-alcoholic beverages (alcoholic beverages are included in the evening Drinks Hours
Recreation & Guest Activities – Complimentary
- A range of water sports; antique canoes, kayaks, sail boats, electric boats, lake swimming
- 2 new pickleball courts, tennis court, basketball, baseball field, roller hockey, volleyball, mountain bikes, various walking trails ranging from .5 miles to a loop of 2.8 miles
- Main Lodge: billiards, roulette, card & board games, puzzles
- Playhouse: The Pub, heritage bowling lanes, squash court, ping pong, large screen TV
- Exercise Room: treadmill, free weights, exercise bikes, yoga mats
- Ice & Meat House: whirlpool, sauna, showers & changing rooms
- Old Power House; dedicated conference facility with board table/chairs for 12 persons, Reading room, side office for private calls, admin use, AV equipment, Expansive terrace
- Extensive vintage library collection with first & limited editions
Services
Maid(s), Manager, Groundskeeper/Pool Maintenance
Culinary Program – Inclusive
Dining options include sit-down meals, buffets, picnics, etc. with various venues utilized to take advantage of our outdoor settings/weather permitting or in the Dining Room. The resident chef will customize all meals in advance of arrival and serves farm-to-table menus to take advantage of local farmers markets, neighboring farms, etc.
Full Breakfast: Served each morning buffet/family-style in the Great Hall Dining Room. In addition to standard breakfast items (muffins, fruit, yogurt, cereals etc.), guests can request omelets, pancakes, oatmeal, or a custom egg order, etc.
Daily lunch: A few options offered from dockside at the Boathouse or outdoor barbecue served at picnic tables to box lunches for excursions. When guests dine together, lunch is typically served family-style.
Drinks Hour: Prior to dinner each evening, typically from 7 to 8 pm daily (or a time per the guests’ preference), is ‘Drinks Hour’. The cocktail hour offers a complimentary evening signature cocktail. Guests can also order other alcoholic beverages such as wine, beer, spirits, or Champagne. An array of passed hot and/or cold canapés is served. This reception can be held in The Pub, The Casino, dockside, or on the front porch of The Playhouse. During this hour-long reception, all alcoholic beverages are complimentary.
Dinner: Typically served each evening in the Dining Room and traditionally a four-course meal with printed menus. For dinner, meats, chicken, steak, or salmon/local Rainbow trout are prepared. Casual barbeques are also popular. For special occasions, a more festive setting and upgraded cuisine can be created and served.
An earlier children’s dinner can be arranged so adults can enjoy their evening meal. After their early meal, children can enjoy a playroom nearby with a TV, games, and books for their pleasure. Lake Kora can arrange for child-minding during this time with advance notice for a fee.
After Dinner: Typically, guests enjoy taking in the evening’s chill at a campfire with old-fashioned s’mores down at the Wiki-ups at the water’s edge under a starlit sky. After dinner drinks, ice cream or other late-night snacks can also be arranged. The Pub is another favorite spot for night caps.
Optional Services
- Transportation transfers to & from Lake Kora (auto, limo, seaplane, helicopter)
- Additional activities requested; massage therapist, yoga instructor, guided fly-fishing, professional tennis coach, wildlife naturalist, musicians, D.J., storyteller, photographer
- Off site visits to Great Camp Sagamore or The Museum on Blue Lake Mountain
- Additional wines, beers & spirits can be ordered in advance at guest’s expense with selection from our cellar list. Other items may be ordered from our local purveyor. Guests are also welcome to bring your own alcoholic beverages, in which case, a corkage fee is applied to opened bottles.
- Babysitting services by authorized staff with advance appointment. Hourly rates apply.
- Laundry services
- Motor Boats can be reserved on a daily or weekly basis
- Stone Chapel: a historic chapel built by John Russell Pope
- Gratuities
Distances
The following services can be arranged (at additional charge and with advance notice)
- Transportation transfers to/from Adirondack Regional Airport in Saranac Lake – car rental, limo services or luxury mini-van
- Helicopter rides from SLK to land directly on the property
- Sea Plane rides from SLK, New York, Boston to land directly on the private lake
- Helicopter or sea plane tours during fall foliage season
- Sea plane or helicopter flights from New York City or Boston directly to/from Lake Kora are approx. 75 minutes (one way)
Driving
Lake Kora is reachable from Northeastern cities. Approximate times:
- New York City: 5½ hours
- Greenwich, CT: 5 hours
- Westchester County: 5 hours
- Boston: 5 hours
- Montreal, Canada: 3 ¾ hours
- Albany, NY: 2¼ hours
- Lake Placid, NY: 2 hours
- Syracuse, NY: 2 ½ hours
Note: Specific directions directly to our Great Camp can be provided upon a confirmed reservation due to security precautions.
Air Travel:
Closest airport: Adirondack Regional Airport (SLK). Cape Air flies direct to Saranac Lake into SLK offering three flights a day from Boston Logan International Airport (BOS). Guests can rent a car at SLK for 1½ hour drive to/from Lake Kora on scenic roads.
Lake Kora can arrange charter service for guests interested in flying privately into SLK. This airport has the longest runway in the Adirondacks and can handle jets up to and including Boeing 757s.
Another option is flying with a major carrier: Alaska Airlines, American, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest or United to Albany, NY; Boston, MA; New York City airports or Syracuse, NY – then rent a car for a scenic drive to/from Lake Kora. Car rental services available at airports.
Train Travel:
Closest train station is Albany-Rensselaer (ALB) on Amtrak from New York City- Penn Station. Their Adirondack line travels up the Hudson River Valley for a scenic ride. Guests can then rent a car at ALB for a 2 ½ hour ride to/from Lake Kora.
Overview
Lake Kora celebrates 125 years in 2023! This original and exclusive lakefront Adirondack Great Camp is situated on 1,000 private acres with a 500-acre lake in Upstate New York and is considered one of the most rustically luxurious camps in the Adirondacks. Designed by famed Great Camp architect William West Durant in 1898 for Timothy Woodruff, Lieutenant Governor of New York (1897 to 1902), who named Lake Kora in honor of his wife, Cora Woodruff.
With only five owners in its 125-year history, the second was Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt who purchased Lake Kora in 1913 and New York Assistant District Attorney Francis Patrick Garvan, who purchased the property in 1914. In 1982, Lake Kora was purchased by Ann Mallinckrodt. Today, the estate is owned by a private family based in New Zealand (purchased in 2005). In 2015, the current owners opened this historic Great Camp to select clientele in summer and early fall for exclusive use only.
More than a century ago, Lake Kora was built with timber and stones from its own private land and on-site iron workers, carpenters and stone masons crafted original furnishings and fixtures. Once a playground for American aristocrats, politicians and finance magnates, today Lake Kora provides an authentic Adirondack guest experience and is known as the premiere showcase and one of the most stunning of Adirondack Great Camps.
Lake Kora is located Upstate New York in Hamilton County, nestled remotely in the Adirondacks in the Historic Great Camp District. Neighbors are Great Camp Sagamore (formerly owned by the Vanderbilt family) and Great Camp Uncas (formerly owned by J.P. Morgan). The Adirondack Great Camps are grand, historic, romantic log mansions built by Gilded Age titans of industry along the remote lakeshores of Upstate New York. It was a time when cities were growing, and nature seemed too far away. The foremost families of the era – Vanderbilts, Morgans, Posts, Roosevelts, and Rockefellers – looked for a summer escape from crowded urban environments and found they yearned for wooded retreats of great, yet rustic comfort. Using native Adirondack timber, stripped twigs and round stones pulled from rushing rivers, they created pastoral estates of astounding beauty and charm, places where nature could be encountered in its ideal form. These Great Camps embodied the romantic 19th-and early 20th-century notion of “roughing it” in the highest of level luxury – a dream that continues to this day to harken the sophisticated and adventurous to the Adirondacks. Some Great Camps were lavish, others less so – but none is expressed better, and more authentically as a remote Adirondack retreat, than Lake Kora.
Stay where the world can’t find you.
Please note:
- The rental season at Lake Kora is June 15 to October 1
- Rate is based on 24 guests in 16 bedrooms
- Supplemental charge for island cabin
- For exclusive use only
- Stays of less than one week are possible
- There is a 4-night minimum stay from June 15 through Labor Day and a 3-night minimum stay after Labor Day
Property Details
Lake Kora’s base lodging offers 16 guest rooms in 6 separate historic structures and accommodates 24 guests. [Additional guests/accommodations, for up to 11 additional guests (for up to 35 guests, total), are available at an additional cost for a per person/per night fee.]
Tree House
Sleeps 4
- Seating area, kitchenette-dining table for 4
- Master bedroom-king bed-fireplace-bathroom
- Upstairs bedroom-queen bed-fireplace-bathroom
Gardener’s Cottage
Sleeps 2
- Dining & Living Room-fireplace-kitchenette-1/2 bath
- Upstairs master bedroom-king bed-fireplace-bathroom
Boathouses (2)
Black:
Sleeps 4
- Living Room-kitchenette-fireplace-expansive deck
- Master bedroom-king bed-fireplace-bathroom
- Upstairs bedroom-twin beds-fireplace-bathroom
Red:
Sleeps 4
- Living Room-kitchenette-fireplace-expansive deck
- Master bedroom-king bed-fireplace-bathroom
- Upstairs bedroom-twin beds-fireplace-bathroom
Cottages (2)
Cottage One:
Sleeps 4
- Living Room, Dining Room, fireplace, kitchen
- Upstairs bedroom: queen bed, shared bathroom
- Upstairs bedroom: twin beds, shared bathroom
- Additional bathroom on main level
Cottage Two:
Sleeps 4
- Living Room, fireplace, Dining Room, kitchen
- Upstairs bedroom: queen bed, shared bathroom
- Upstairs bedroom: twin beds, shared bathroom
- Additional bathroom on main level
Library – Located adjacent to Boathouses
Sleeps 2
- Master bedroom: king bed, fireplace, bathroom
- Kitchenette: outdoor private balcony
Main Lodge
There are 6 guest rooms located in the Main Lodge (on the main level and second floor). A mix of rooms with twin beds and king beds and 5 bathrooms – sleeps max 11.
- Large living room with huge fireplace, comfortable seating and billiards table
- Small cozy lounge with fireplace
- Dining room with table for 22 plus alcove dining which seats an additional 6 people
- Indian – Sleeps 2: Main level bedroom, twin beds, fireplace, bathroom
- Fort – Sleeps 2: Main level bedroom, twin beds, fireplace, bathroom
- Gables – Sleeps 2: Upstairs bedroom, king bed, fireplace, bathroom
- Alcove – Sleeps 2: Upstairs bedroom, twin beds, fireplace, bathroom
- Porch – Sleeps 2: Upstairs bedroom, twin beds, a wall of screened windows to bring the outdoors inside Bathroom shared with Gables bedroom
- Bachelor’s – Sleeps 1: Upstairs bedroom with 1 twin bed Bathroom shared with Alcove bedroom
Island Cabin – additional fee and accessible only by boat
Sleeps 4
- Living Room, dining area x 8, 2 massive fireplaces, kitchen, expansive deck with views over the lake
- Upstairs master bedroom: king bed, fireplace, bathroom
- Upstairs bedroom: twin beds
- Hot tub and outdoor dining
*Sofa beds that sleep 2 persons in Gardener’s Cottage and Red Boathouse