A log camp opposite Three Brothers Island at Lake George, whose original core was built in 1928 for a niece of George Foster Peabody, will be disassembled, removed and replaced by a contemporary mansion.
The Town of Bolton’s Planning Board approved the new owner’s request to replace the camp in a March meeting.
The owner, Capital District developer and luxury home builder Peter Belmonte, told the Planning Board: “We’re working very diligently to find a good home for the part of the existing structure that is a true log home. We’re not seeking compensation. We just want the house to go to a good family.”
Belmonte told the Board that later additions to the log camp “had no great value” and would be demolished. He purchased the 2.73-acre lot and house in October, 2025 for $6.5 million.
According to a history of the property written by Phil Defliese Jr., whose family owned it for nearly sixty years, the lot was known for decades as “the Triuna Boat House lot.”
With a boat house and docks, it was the mainland base for Triuna – the island home of Spencer and Katrina Trask and, after Spencer Trask’s death in 1909, of Katrina Trask and her second husband, George Foster Peabody.
(An investment banker and partner of Spencer Trask’s, Peabody is best known on Lake George for donating the land for Shepard Park to Lake George Village, for helping to create the working womens’ retreat at Wiawaka and for reserving Prospect Mountain, Hearthstone Park, Diamond Island and French Point for the use of the public. You can read all about that here.)
In 1928, Everett Bacon, a onetime partner of Peabody’s and the husband of his niece, Eva Peabody, acquired the parcel and built the log camp, which he named Spruce Lodge.
Belmonte told the board that the contemporary mansion will be screened by vegetation and its windows made from non-reflective glass to reduce its impact on the lake.
“We’re trying to create a very organic look,” Belmonte said, explaining that the house will be situated on a portion of the newly subdivided 2.73-acre lot.
As it happens, Planning Board member Henry Caldwell’s great-grandfather, W.K. Bixby sold the lot to the Trasks in 1906.
Although traveling and absent from the Board’s March meeting, Caldwell said he favored a public hearing on Belmonte’s plans to remove the camp because of its possible historic significance.
Although sympathetic, Board member John Gaddy said the house is not listed on any register of historic places. He added that he could find no evidence in any published source that it had unusual architectural, historical or social value.
“John Gaddy is very thorough. If he looked into the issue and found nothing, then nothing is there,” said Board Chair Herb Koster, affirming the board’s conclusion that no public hearing was warranted.
A version of this article first appeared on the Lake George Mirror, America’s oldest resort paper, covering Lake George and its surrounding environs. You can subscribe to the Mirror HERE.
I am Phil Defliese, Jr and my family owned this historic camp for sixty years through October of last year. I want to correct the record as to the construction of this dwelling.
There was no “original core” to the house and there no “later additions “ that have “no great value.” This is fiction spun by the new owner wishing to diminish the impact of his planned demolition.
The house was built in one piece in 1928. The central section containing the great room, dining room and other public spaces used whole log construction. The north and south wings of the house contain all the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen and utility spaces. Indeed, without the two wings you do not have a dwelling. The wings use frame construction with half-log siding. I understand that the lady of the house, Eva Peabody Bacon, insisted that the bedrooms and baths had “finished “ inside walls, not the rustic logs.
So, a historic home, completed as one with no later additions, will perish on the altar of the new and shiny. Pity.
Phil Defliese
PS Please publish this as I want to correct the public record .