HISTORY

Samuel Brill, a Russian immigrant from New York City, bought Brill Island in 1902. It is understood that he had previously visited Schroon Lake with a friend. It was known that Schroon Lake was friendly to Jewish people, unlike other lake communities in the Adirondacks at that time. The main house was built in 1929. The cottage was built in the 50’s. We purchased the property in 2019 from the granddaughters of Samuel and Ethel Brill.

The Brill/Robbins Family has had a long history on Schroon Lake. Samuel and Ethel’s daughter Dorothy married Allan Robbins whose family also purchased land on Schroon Lake referred to as “The Murray Estate”. Allan and his brothers, Burton and Norman, developed a hotel called The AlBurNorm’s Hotel and Casino which later became the Edgewater Hotel. They also worked in the family business in New York City called National Screen Service, a business involved with promoting movies with trailers, photos and print marketing. As a child, Allan attended camp at nearby Camp Wakonda and his daughters, Susan and Nancy, attended Red Wing Camp for girls at the north end of the lake.

Schroon Lake and the Scaroon Manor close by, was the setting for the famous classic 1958 Hollywood film, Marjorie Morningstar, starring Natalie Wood and Gene Kelly. Originally, Allan Robbins was contacted to ask if the movie could be produced at the AlBurNorm Hotel, Allan declined as he didn’t wish for his property to be overrun by the havoc of the movie production. So most of the production took place at Scaroon Manor. The Robbins family was utterly surprised when they watched the movie the first time, there is a very short snippet of a sunrise scene in the movie that was filmed on Brill Island without permission!