By Rob Wipfler

While we hope to always maintain the same “feel” to the Kingswood campus, there have been some drastic changes to the facility over the course of the 40 plus years of ownership under the Wipfler family. Some of those changes or updates include the renovations to the Dining Hall, the construction of the CIT Barn and the Nature Lodge, the moving of the Waterfront Cabin from the shore to its current location, and the removal of the storied Smith Hall. Those changes are all worthy of their own report, but none of them have had such a large impact as the construction of the new Main Lodge 25 years ago.

This is a chapter of  camp history that while familiar to some grizzled old-timers, is probably new to everyone else. So without further adieu, here is the saga of the Kingswood Main Lodge:

By the end of the summer of 1999, we had determined that we needed to replace our Main Lodge. First of all, as you can see for yourself, it was an eyesore. The floors were warped, the building was built in an era when people presumably were much shorter than they are today, and it essentially served as a glorified ping pong room. And then there’s the upstairs…

I am not a superstitious person at all, but if ever there was a haunted house- this was it! The old lodge seemed to have an aura that hit you with goosebumps as soon as you began climbing the stairs to the staff apartments on the second floor. More than one person claimed to have seen a ghost.

We were lucky enough to receive a permit (for $25 dollars!) to tear down the old lodge and rebuild a new one on the same footprint. This was no small feat considering the permitting often required for buildings on a shoreline.

The lodge was knocked down in one day and hauled across the road to the counselor parking lot where we still to this day hold our bonfires. On a snowy winter day when there was no chance of igniting a forest fire, Jerry Vanasse put the entire pile of wreckage to the torch.

Next we called in the big guns. Todd Sabiston, Kingswood’s own rock star and Renaissance man, returned from Baltimore and built a small winterized compartment in the infirmary to live in as he worked on the new building. A resident of the old lodge, Todd had a vested interest in building his new accommodations to his liking.

With Todd’s guidance, the Lodge was ready by opening day of 2000. We danced in there that summer, though notice that the finishing work is not completely done- the beams, for instance, are not enclosed in decorative pine. I doubt these dancers ever noticed…

Even back then, the counselors chaperoning the dance dressed in costume, although the get-ups have become more ridiculous over the years…

The new Main Lodge is such an integral part of life at camp that it is hard to believe that we were ever without it.