Vintage Resort
Timberlane Cottages is not a hotel or motel. We have no room service, no main desk with bell hops or porters.
Renting a housekeeping cottage means that you are renting a mini household for a week or two.
Hopefully everything that you need is in the cabin to make the transition from your real home to here, easy. Of course at your real home, you probably have dishes and silverware that match; and probably aren’t vintage, or close to it!
Also, we bet that when you sit in your favorite club chair at home it may be a bit more comfortable, but we also bet that ours’ have more history.
Timberlane is a very old compound of cottages and cabins that were built right after World War II. When service men and women came home, they married their sweethearts and had “us’ baby boomers. Lake George and the Adirondack Region soon became a sought-after area for young families to vacation in the summer.
A Lake George island camp spot could be rented for not more than $1 a day and for the more prosperous or less hearty, bungalows and cabins like our’s, were built and furnished on site.
If you have read the “Great and the Gracious”, you would know that in the late 1800’s (Victorian era), the Lake George area was one large estate, after another. Some of the remains include the Gate House, south of Diamond Point on Lake Shore Drive, and you can still see many stone walls, fences and planters, which were the entrances to these grand houses of wealth and prestige.
Timberlane has one of the few existing twig-trim interior houses (Brook House). This white-painted miniature house (with a 40’s extension for bedrooms) is rented by a family for almost two decades.
Across Lake Shore Drive from Timberlane Road is a large white house. Our tiny twig-trim house belonged to the owners of this estate house and it provided the ladies and gentlemen a porch to sit on to view the lake from an appropriate distance. It also provided gentlemen hunters a luxury camp house during hunting and fishing season.
The small building with the red roof (which is now our guest center) was the ice house that was used for their party refreshments and to keep the fish cold after a catch.
Until a few years ago, there was a stone dam that spanned the stream that is part of our property. Right in the middle was a beautiful twig-treat gazebo with seating. Unfortunately it was destroyed during a hurricane season with major flooding of our property a number of years ago. You can still see some of the large rocks that were part of this damn in the stream.
The rest of the cottages and cabins were built, as stated after WWII, by a developer named Earl Woodward, who bought up the estate. In 1954, the property was purchased by Richard and Cecilia McCann and Marla Hansen. We found a lot of memorabilia in the cabin attics, including Richard and Cecilia’s love letters during the war. They ran Timberlane until 1994, and sold it to the present Owners, the Wacks Family.
We have always thought that Mr. McCann sold us Timberlane because we had dogs and Mr. McCann loved dogs!
Like many of you, we are here because the property feels untouched by time. As you are driving down the narrow Timberlane Road, you can easily forget that you are in the 21st Century.
The cabins are filled with furniture that was built on site; other furniture from the funky 1950’s and from hours of exploring cabin attics, attending auctions, and barn yard sales.
It has been our intention to remove clocks, telephones, televisions. We hope you can relax (a bit of digital detox) and enjoy an almost extinct environment here in the Adirondack region on Northwest Bay, Lake George.
WELCOME… Christina Grinnell, Caretaker and Host