This 100 year old cottage was bought in 1990 to be used for summer resort.
The deed showed the construction year unknown.
It was a very old, small two story house with only 900 sq ft, two tiny bedrooms upstairs, one living and eating room downstairs and nonfunctioning fireplace. This structure perched upon a concrete foundation without basement, but conveniently offered some room under the bottom of the cottage to be used as an underneath storage where car tires, shovels, brooms, ladders and anything else of small sizes were left. Windows were opened and closed sideways by handles. The property was almost ⅓ of an acre including beach areas, 100 ft lake frontage, bordered with neighborhood park on the south and the house of Mr. Sandel on the north.
One day he came to me and said “You are standing on me.” which obviously puzzled me. The next moment he said he was Dick Sandel. He noticed  I was wearing a pair of sandals! He also said his cottage had been built in 1937! The year I was born! However he didn't know when my cottage had been built. It was there when he came here, he said.
The yard had been left without (lawn) care with trees, shrubs, and wild vegetations growing abundantly, resembling a forest, mostly oak trees, a few maples pines and spruce trees.
There was a beach 100 feet in length with the end of the slope eroding. We bought a power boat, and I started to learn its operation, which was quite different from car driving.
Some neighbors wondered if I would hire their kids for mowing, but I told them I preferred leaving it as it was, even saying that I was trying to be a naturalist here.
There was no protection of the water pipes during the long freezing winter, so the water authority drained water around the second week of October and then filled it by the third week of the next April.
So we spent on weekends there and enjoyed not only swimming or boat riding, but just staying there to watch the lake views, esp., southward toward Naples, New York. All night long, there were nocturnal loud sounds of wild bugs, probably crickets and grasshoppers, and so on. All night-long bug sounds would suddenly stop at the break of dawn. There were fireflies every night.
In a few years I had a local stone man construct the stonewall from the north end to the south along the beach line.
There are two days to celebrate:
Memorial Day the fourth Monday 2015 at night the entire beach surrounding the lake is lighted with flares or torches, and fireworks, then our lake life officially starts with marine sports, jet skiing, power boats, or large pontoons.
The next time is Labor Day on  Monday September 7, 2015, following the similar night feist, the lake life will officially end, with cottage dwellers to pack their possessions and leave after securely locking the doors.
Suddenly the area become eerily quiet in and around the lake. Yes, it's time for us, humans, to rest, and give a long winter break to our cherished lake since she needs recovery out of human uses and abuses.
Now we are entering the quiet world, occasionally interrupted by sounds from ducks, Canadian geese, gulls, and so on.
In 2004, the cottage was replaced by newly-built lake home. We had enjoyed the very old cottage for 14 years. I lately found a few photos of those days and post them here.