Archive: News

After a summer of fund raising Lansing's North Log Cabin will be assembled starting next week.  A meeting of key people including contractor Al Roy of Lindal Cedar Homes, Building Inspector Lyn Day, Highway Superintendent Jack French, Park Superintendent Steve Colt, and McCarthy Builders' Pete Peters Wednesday laid out the exact position of the cabin and a rough schedule for reassembling it.

The cabin was originally built in 1791 on the corner of Searles and Conlon Roads in Lansing.  It was reassembled about a mile north on Conlon Road, then in 1958 reassembled again behind the Cayuga Museum in Auburn.  Two years ago it was disassembled for the third time, and brought home to Lansing, where the logs have been stored on the Highway Department grounds.  Town Councilman Bud Shattuck moved the project forward, getting community members involved, and eventually handed the project over to Ed laVigne for the fund raising/construction phase.  The Lansing Community Council headed by LaVigne raised more than $13,000 over the summer to pay for a concrete slab, reassembling the logs, and a new roof.


Last week the Town Highway department began clearing a site near the entrance to Myers Park.  This week they have been putting in gravel and rolling it to compress the stones in preparation for pouring the footers and slab next week.  Roy says his crew will pour the slab, while Peters' volunteer crew of four will be on hand to perform the finish work on the concrete.  Volunteer labor reduces the estimated $17,500 needed to erect the cabin.

Roy says it will take three of his people at a time to work on the cabin, and he anticipates it will take about two weeks to assemble once the slab is completed.  He and LaVigne separated the logs several months ago to begin working out which logs go into which walls.  At that time they restacked the logs into four piles.  That also helped them identify which logs have been damaged beyond repair.  Roy says he will get replacement logs milled over the next week or so.

Highway Department workers will bring the logs to the site next week, maintaining the four piles.  Once the cabin is erected Eagle Scout candidate Martin Keefe will provide the mudding between the logs that insulates the cabin from the wind.


Donors who give a minimum of $150 are listed in the 'North Log Cabin' section of the Lansing Harbor Festival program every year.  This year 24 such donors were listed.  A $3,000 anonymous donation and countless smaller donations raised over $13,000 in only a few months, enough to start assembling the cabin so it doesn't have to weather another winter as a vulnerable pile of logs.

LaVigne hopes to have at least one more chicken barbecue this fall to raise money for the cabin.  Once the cabin is erected future funding will go toward restoring the interior in some fashion.  Meanwhile the Community Council is working on a number of other possible projects including a pavilion near the Town hall for chicken barbecues and the Lansing Farmer's Market, a bridge between Myers Park and Salt Point, among others.

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