The Saranac Laboratory, 2007 Union Depot, restored, 2007 Founded in 1980, Historic Saranac Lake is a not-for-profit architectural preservation organization that captures and presents local history from its center in the Saranac Laboratory Museum. The organization offers professional knowledge and experience to the public in support of historic preservation, architectural and historical research, and education. Historic Saranac Lake is located at 89 Church Street, the site of the Saranac Laboratory founded by Dr. Edward L. Trudeau.

Historic Saranac Lake has successfully nominated over 170 properties to the National Register of Historic Places, and has joined with other organizations to administer preservation projects such as the restorations of the Union Depot and the Bartók Cabin, and producing publications, articles and curricula that highlight the lives and architecture unique to our region. They offer educational events that feature these sites and stories through their Summer Music Series, History Day, walking tours, and lectures, all offering a heritage tourism experience filled with outdoor, fresh-air history.

In 1998, Historic Saranac Lake assumed ownership of Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau's Saranac Laboratory, built in 1894, which was founded for the study of tuberculosis. The building is a tangible reminder of the possibility and optimism Trudeau sustained despite the struggle and loss of so many to this debilitating disease. Historic Saranac Lake opened the Saranac Laboratory Museum in the summer of 2009, with two exhibits, The Great War: World War I in Saranac Lake, and 125 Years of Science in the main laboratory space.

For more information, visit HSL's website: historicsaranaclake.org.

Historic Properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places through the efforts of Historic Saranac Lake include:

Other National Register properties in the Saranac Lake region:

Adirondack Daily Enterprise, January 4, 1979

Village refuses offer; Pontiac to be razed

...Several members of the audience, including Historic Saranac Lake members Betsy Minehan, DorothyFobare and Mary Hotaling, said they believe the village should acquire the theater to retain its historic facade.Historic Saranac Lake is a group,dedicated to preserving local, historical landmarks.

Adirondack Daily Enterprise, November 3, 1980

Historic Saranac Lake Inc. seeks awareness of past

SARANAC LAKE —Memories of tuberculosis curing filled the air Thursday night as a capacity crowd gathered in the Cantwell Community Room of the Saranac Lake Free Library for the first official meeting of Historic Saranac Lake, Inc., under its recently granted state charter.

Chairwoman Mary Hotaling emphasized that Historic Saranac Lake, Inc., is a preservation rather than an historic organization. Formed 18 months ago, its members began [an] inventory of local buildings whose historic role in the community’s development might include them in the National Registry.

While the organization's principal goal is to have such local buildings included in the register, Mrs. Hotaling stated that members also hope to build an appreciation and awareness of the past within the community.

Betsy Minehan explained the building inventory format which must be filed for registry submission. Based on the inventory to date, the organization last spring published an historic walking tour of the village.

Dorothy Fobare, treasurer, reported that during the past year Historic Saranac Lake's membership has grown from the nine charter Members to a current total of 354.

The evening's program centered on life in Saranac Lake during its years as a tuberculosis health center. Dr. Alfred Decker, a thoracic surgeon, moderated the panel of speakers, introducing the topic with a general background of the medical influence of Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau both here and abroad.

D. Mott Chapin, the first speaker, described his arrival in the village at 17 and the life he lived for 10 years while he was getting well. He took those present through an average day in the life of a tubercular patient in a private sanatorium, stressing its simplicity and the tremendous warmth of feeling within the curing population.

William McLaughlin, the second panelist, gave a brief view of a child's life growing up in the village and then, when he discovered he had tuberculosis at 21, of a patient's life at Trudeau Sanatorium. He described the refusal of his grandfather, John English to admit tubercular patients to the St. Regis Hotel, which he operated at the corner of Bloomingdale Ave. and Broadway, and the routine x-ray exams given all pupils annually in the local schools.

Sue Arnold, the final panelist, stated that she had been a local resident for only three years. She and her husband, Glenn, have purchased, and are restoring, the former Noyes Cottage, a private sanatorium at the corner of Helen Hill and Front Street. She described the private porches which complement, each bedroom, the main porch ground the first floor on which patients sat in cure chairs, the dumbwaiter to take meals to patients bedridden on the upper floors and many other typical features of the day preserved in their house.

At the conclusion, members of the audience gave spontaneous memories of that period of Saranac Lake history which were recorded on tape by the preservationists.

They also studied a pictorial exhibit of the period selected and printed from the Adirondack Collection by Barbara Parnass.

Historic Saranac Lake Inc.'s board, under its charter, includes original members: Janet Decker, Jeanne DeMattos, Dorothy Fobare, Philip Gallos, Mary Hotaling, Betsy Minehan, Barbara Parnass, Nadia Slack and Helen Todd.

Adirondack Daily Enterprise, December 22, 1980

At a recent meeting of the board of trustees of Historic Saranac Lake, following officers were elected for a one-year term: Mary Hotaling, president; Betsy Minehan, vice president; Dorothy Stephen, recording secretary; and Dorothy Fobare, treasurer.

Mrs. Fobare wishes to remind everyone that Historic Saranac Lake license plate frames are great stocking stuffers!

This limited edition is almost sold out and will not be repeated.

The remaining stock is available at the local Chamber of Commerce office and Tom Doty's Country Road Beef.

Adirondack Daily Enterprise, May 19, 1982

Three new board members for Historic Saranac Lake

SARANAC LAKE - Historic Saranac Lake, a local preservation and education organization, has recently made a number of changes in its board of directors and Betsy Minehan, former vice president, has been elected president.

New board members are Susan Arnold, Eleanor Munn, Janet Dudones and Coralie North, all of Saranac Lake. Board vacancies occured with the resignation of president Mary Hotaling in March and Philip Gallos in late April.

The Historic Saranac Lake board members are overseeing two main projects. An ongoing project is nomination of a number of buildings in the community to the National Register of Historic Places.

The most recent project is the opening of the Rural Preservation Company office which was formed when Historic Saranac Lake entered into a $38,500 contract with the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

The Rural Preservation Company's main goal is the rehabilitation of housing while preserving its historic integrity. It will provide technical assistance to aid in the rehabilitation process. Currently, it is developing an inventory of housing needs and conditions by conducting a three part survey over the next few months.

The teams of surveyors are now working on part one, a walking,, survey of village housing, assessing the housing condition and historic significance for possible nomination to the National Register. About 80 houses on Riverside Drive, Church, Academy and St. Bernard streets have been identified as potential historic structures. Letters are being sent to the owners of these buildings explaining further the benefits of listing on the National Registerr and asking owners to complete a more in depth form on their particular building.

Adirondack Daily Enterprise, May 31, 1984

Historic inventory done

[NOTE: The following is not an accurate list of those properties which were finally listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was one step in a process, which in a number of cases was never completed.]

SARANAC LAKE - Historic Saranac Lake has completed its presentations of buildings to the National Register of Historic Places. Fifty-eight individual cure cottages and the site of the Winter Carnival Ice Palace were reviewed and accepted in April. At the May 18 meeting of the Committee on the Register, the following buildings were accepted: Baldwin School, North Elba Town House, the homes of taxidermists Charles L. Dickert and Herbert Miner and William W. Rice, the Freeman Baker Boat Landing, the Gutzon Borglum statue of Dr. E.L. Trudeau, and the Tousley House. Five additional cure cottages accepted were: the Colbath Cottage and home of guide Hosea Colbath; the Stevenson Cottage; the Friary; Hillside Lodge; and the Ledger Cottage. Two new historic districts were created: Cottage Row and Highland Park, both sections of Park Avenue.

These study reviews were based on forms submitted by building owners in a village-wide canvass. Additional research was also done by Philip L. Gallos, author of By Foot in the Adirondacks. Black and white prints and color slides of each house were taken by Gallos and by Barbara Parnass, photographer and H.S.L. president.

Previously nominated were the Union Depot, Prescott House, the Power and Light building, and three historic districts: Church Street, Berkeley Square, and the old Trudeau Sanatorium, now the American Management Association. The Will Rogers Hospital has already achieved listing on the National Register.

Before the final listing on the Register, letters will be sent to the owners of each building by the State Historic Preservation Office asking for comments. A public information meeting will also be held here in the fall.

Adirondack Daily Enterprise, March 8, 1985

SL historic group progresses

By LINDA LUMSDKN

SARANAC LAKE – Historic Saranac Lake, Inc. hopes to create a bit of history itself in coming months.

The historic-preservation association this month plans to begin renovating a Charles Street house into a home for a low-income buyer; it is awaiting official word due in the spring placing nearly 200 local structures on the National Register of Historic Places, and this summer it will publish an illustrated history of the village's cure-cottage industry compiled by writer Phil Gallos.

The five-year-old non-profit corporation also began 1985 in new quarters, moving from the second floor of the Trudeau Institute to an office in the North Elba Town House at 132 River Street.

Should expected developments materialize, 1985 will be a banner year for an organization which began in reaction to a sidewalk-widening project. Director Mary Hotaling says talk of establishing a "theme" for downtown buildings during the pre-Olympics sidewalk project worried citizens who feared the village would lose the unique historical and architectural legacy of its now-defunct cure-cottage industry. They banded together to increase awareness and pride in that heritage, so that the buildings would survive in their original form.

"Our point was we had an identity already," says Hotaling. She adds that the peculiar cure-cottage industry — the only one of its kind in the United States — should be a source of great pride to the village.

As Gallos has written, "...the village was a place of hope, unlike any other place, the antithesis of a world of fear and rejection, a community of people, both healthy and ill, in which a man or woman with tuberculosis would not be shunned as a carrier of contagion but would be accepted as a human being".

Hotaling became interested in local history after her family bought a former cure cottage. As she learned more about her home and neighborhood, she became convinced the fascinating information she gleaned should be more readily available to the public.

One of the first projects Historic Saranac Lake tackled was to apply for the National Register of Historic Places designation. The long, drawn-out process last year came within a step of reality when some 185 buildings passed the preliminary review by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Now only final approval from Washington, D.C., is awaited.

Historic Saranac Lake looked at 2,000 village buildings before completing its list of possible historic buildings, according to Hotaling. The group counted some 700 former cure cottages among its tally.

Hotaling adds that numerous historic buildings failed to pass preliminary National Register reviews for various reasons, such as extensive renovations that changed a building's character. Other rejections were more arbitrary. The building which houses The Blue Gentian Cafe, for instance, was rejected by the state because it is not contiguous to the Main Street area which would become the Berkeley Square Historic District.

Inclusion in the National Register does not mean a building cannot be altered or demolished, according to Hotaling, although governmental projects must consider their effect on the historic value of any National Register building. Historic Saranac Lake is seeking no zoning restrictions on property within the proposed historic districts, she added.

One of the greatest benefits of the designation is a 25 percent federal income tax credit for owners who renovate buildings, she says, adding that credit is threatened by the Reagan administration. Historic-district homeowners also may qualify for larger home-improvement loans or matching grants for renovations.

About half of the local National Register nominations are clustered in five areas: the Berkeley Square Historic District, Church Street Historic District, Cottage Row Historic District and Highland Park historic districts on upper Park Avenue and the site of the former Trudeau Sanatorium at what is now the American Management Association.

About a third were nominated thematically as cure cottages, including buildings scattered throughout the village. The remaining dozen sites were nominated for their individual historic value, including the Hathaway Boat Shop at 7 Algonquin Avenue, the Niagara Mohawk Light and Power Building at 2 Main St., the North Elba Town Hall and Keough Marine at 33 Lake Flower Avenue.

"The general value of the nominations is to raise the consciousness of people and make them proud of their history and homes," Hotaling says.

She notes some property owners have taken pains to preserve their buildings' special features. The National Army Store, for instance, recently renovated its brick facade to reveal third-floor windows. The Harrietstown Town Hall also underwent a $250,000 overhaul. And Dr. E. L. Trudeau's former home at 5 Church Street is well maintained by Medical Associates of Saranac Lake, which practices there.

Far down the road, Hotaling would like to erect plaques on buildings stating their historic significance. The group has erected one such sign on Dr. Trudeau's former Church Street laboratory, now a Paul Smith's College dormitory. 1

Gallos is delving further into local history with research for his upcoming book on the cure cottages. 2 The book will be illustrated with vintage photos from the Saranac Lake Free Library's collection. Local photographer Barbara Parnass is making the prints from the original glass plates.

No price has yet been set for the book, which Hotaling warns will be fairly expensive to offset the cost for high-quality photographic reproduction.

Gallos' research has shed light on a unique era, described in part in a 1982 series in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. The story of one building is indicative of the history within the walls of the former cure cottages, many now converted to private homes and apartments:

Because the emotional state of TB patients was considered crucial to their recovery, new arrivals "taking the cure" were interviewed to place them in cure cottages that would best suit their age, interests, and emotional and intellectual levels. They spent their days reclining in special cure chairs on open-air porches to inhale the fresh Adirondack air.

At 5 Franklin Ave., the Mary Prescott Reception Hospital was a clearing house for the seriously ill. From it, patients often were sent to private sanatoriums clustered on nearby Helen Hill, with the greatest concentration of private cure cottages. Now a private dormitory for women students of North Country Community College, 5 Franklin Ave. also was once the site of the Saranac Lake Study and Craft Guild. Out of that guild grew NCCC's X-ray school. The building was named Prescott House in honor of its founder, a former TB patient who originally opened it as a cure cottage at Dr. Trudeau's request.

Following the publication of Gallos' book this summer, Hotaling says Historic Saranac Lake will largely have met its historic-preservation charge. Now it is moving into the realm of housing. Last year it sponsored a two-day housing rehabilitation workshop for building professionals and created a "parts warehouse" at the railroad depot. Home renovators can buy scrap materials there that otherwise would be carted to the landfill.

Historic Saranac Lake last year also bought its own house, a Charles Street structure 3 obtained for the price of back taxes with part of a $10,000 grant from the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal. Hotaling says the structure is sturdy, although the former owner used the basement as a bathroom. The sewage was cleaned up and Camp Adirondack inmates and volunteers emptied the interior, she says.

No further work was done on the vacant building for months, although Historic Saranac Lake is advertising for a contractor to do work on the recently completed specifications. Hotaling says work may begin as early as mid-March.

The group will seek additional funds to complete the renovations, which she estimates will cost from $20,000 to $25,000. She expects the house will be on the market for a low-income buyer by late summer. Historic Saranac Lake is looking at other similar buildings to buy in what it hopes will be an ongoing program to save old buildings and help ease local housing problems.

Historic Saranac Lake also plans to continue past programs, such as its small lending library on historic housing topics and the production of various brochures, including one that describes a walking tour of the village's historic buildings.

Most of the group's funds come from the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal. In addition to the $10,000 Rural Area Revitalization Program grant for the Charles Street house, this year it awarded the organization a $32,403 administrative grant, which must be matched a third by in-kind services. The state Council on the Arts also awarded it $4,110 to help fund the cure cottage history. The organization also sponsors fund-raising efforts, such as the sale of notecards and mums.

Adirondack Daily Enterprise, August 11-17, 2006

Historic Saranac Lake to host third annual house tour

SARANAC LAKE – Seven historic sites will be featured in Historic. Saranac Lake's Third Annual House Tour on Wednesday, August 16. Buildings will be open from 3 to 7 p.m. To begin the self-guided tour, participants are asked to register at the Saranac Laboratory, 89 Church Street, between 2:45 and 5:45 p.m. The cost is $20.

Included in this year's tour, are The Porcupine, the Sloan Cottage, Jakobe House, the Vault at Pine Ridge Cemetery, the Iffert House, the Masonic Temple and the Saranac Laboratory.

The Porcupine, at 350 Park Avenue, was built in 1902 by Branch and Callanan on a design, by well-known Adirondack architect William L. Coulter. The owner was C. F. Aldrich, a tuberculosis patient who died in 1904. His father, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, once editor of the Atlantic Monthly, called the home "The Porcupine" "because it had so many good points, and because it was occupied by a quill-driver [writer]." It was later the combined home and office of Dr. Ippoly and later still of Dr. Forbes. One of the largest single-family houses in the village it is currently operated as a bed-and-breakfast.

The Sloan Cottage, 31 View Street, was built in 1907 and served as a rather elaborate cure cottage for wealthy patients. There is a first-floor "sitting out" porch add a second-floor sleeping porch, both with a view of Baker and MacKenzie Mountains. After outliving its curing function, this house was used as a private school before being restored to use as, a single family home.

The Jakobe House, 383 Park Avenue is a Dutch Colonial Revival-style residence built before 1917. Its fascinating architecture includes a full facade first story porch with paired Doric columns, bay windows and a rectangular balustrade. It was the home of Dr. Carl Merkel, a T.B. surgeon; his son, the current Dr. David Merkel, lived there as a boy.

Plans for the Vault at Pine Ridge Cemetery were adopted in 1925 to create a place for winter storage for up to twenty bodies because the deep frost presented an obstacle for the opening of graves during the winter. The cemetery is the final resting place of many founding families, doctors find their patients and includes the Moody family cemetery (also known as the Old Protestant Cemetery,) the old St. Bernard's, (Catholic) Cemetery; and the Hebrew Memorial Cemetery. Special memorials are present for 15 Norwegian seamen who were at sea when Hitler invaded Norway and who later succumbed to tuberculosis and for 25 relatives of the Ring family of Lake Placid who were killed in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Members of the Masonic Lodge celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Masonic Temple in 2004. It is worth the climb to see their elaborate meeting room on the third floor of the building.

The Iffert House, 179 Kiwassa Road, is reputed to be the oldest house in town. The Saranac Laboratory was built in 1894 for Dr. E.L. Trudeau and was the first laboratory in the United States built for research on tuberculosis.

In its 25-year history, Historic Saranac Lake has made major contributions to the preservation of local history and to the education of the public about the unique contribution of Saranac Lake in health history. From the late 1800's to the mid-20th Century, Saranac Lake was the premier place in the Western Hemisphere for research and treatment of tuberculosis.

In addition to saving the Bartok Cabin from demolition, Historic Saranac Lake played a key role in the restoration of the Union Depot, which was reopened to the public in the summer of 1999, after over 30 years of disuse. HSL currently is renovating the Saranac Laboratory where Dr. E. L. Trudeau and his colleagues conducted important research on the treatment and cure of tuberculosis. Other activities of Historic Saranac Lake include sponsoring speakers, giving tours, assisting researchers, and producing videos and books.

For more information about the organization, go to Historic Saranac Lake

Footnotes

1. Now the home of Historic Saranac Lake.
2. Cure Cottages of Saranac Lake
3. 19 Charles Street

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