Saranac Lake 1918 - 1939

A group of patients at Trudeau, 1919, from a photograph album kept by Verdo Newman, back row, second from left. Newman appears to have served in World War I and returned with tuberculosis. Courtesy of Lynn Newman. World War I brought a dramatic rise in tuberculosis cases around the world. In Europe, inadequate nutrition, poor living conditions and the stresses of war, as well as the gassing of soldiers on the battlefield, all wore down natural defenses against the disease. In America, increased screening of immigrants, refugees, and military conscripts led to the discovery of hundreds of incipient — and advanced — cases of tuberculosis. Many, like the Norwegian sailors who stayed at the Walker Cottage on Park Avenue, were sent to Saranac Lake to get well. Within a few years of the end of the war, 650 veterans were reported to be living in the village, and some 45 cottages had contracts with the Veterans Administration to provide care. ¹

By 1918 Saranac Lake had twelve to fifteen hotels, more than sixty boarding houses and twenty doctors, with a permanent population of about 5000. "An additional 1200-1500 health seekers, inclusive of accompanying relatives or friends and attendants" were temporarily in residence, "a floating population because continually changing in personnel, but not varying greatly in numbers." ² A 1917 village survey map [Map #4] prepared by Forrest B. Ames, Health Inspector, shows over 520 buildings housing actively tuberculous individuals — almost half of all the buildings within the village limits.

Dr. E.L. Trudeau's gravestone, at St. John’s in the Wilderness

The village of Saranac Lake continued to grow rapidly in the years after the Great War. Dr. Edward L. Trudeau, increasingly bedridden by his own tuberculosis, died in 1915, forty-three years after he traveled to Paul Smith's to spend his last days in his beloved Adirondacks. The Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium was renamed Trudeau Sanatorium in his honor, and, the following year, the Trudeau School was established as a national training program for medical personnel who worked with pulmonary diseases.

By 1918, the Trudeau Sanatorium had forty buildings in its complex on the side of Mount Pisgah, including an infirmary, library, central administration building and craft center. Nearly every building or improvement was a gift or a memorial. A team of ten nurses and five doctors were treating 300-400 patients a year with one out of every six or seven being completely cured. About 60% of the remainder found their symptoms either arrested or improved.

By 1920 the village population was over 6000, and the community included 753 private residences, 145 buildings "in which housekeeping suites are rented," one large modern apartment building, 85 boarding houses, and thirteen hotels. In the period 1920-1932, empty lots in the commercial district were filled with new construction.

Many of Saranac Lake's largest public buildings were constructed in the mid- to late 1920s: the Hotel Saranac, the Harrietstown Town Hall, Petrova School, Will Rogers Sanatorium, the "Santanoni Apartment House for Health Seekers" on Church Street, the National Guard Armory, and the Paul Smith's Electric Light and Power and Railroad Company building, as well as new bridges over the Saranac River on Broadway and Woodruff Street. All are large-scale, masonry structures comparable with those found in cities of far greater size. Most, however, are the work of local architectural firms such as Scopes & Feustmann and William Distin.

Will Rogers Memorial Hospital

As many as three large commercial laundries were active in the 1920s to clean and sterilize patients’ sheets and laundry. Movie theatres, restaurants, speakeasies and taxicab companies all helped entertain the patients who were well enough to leave their cure porches for a visit to town. A curling rink, first built in 1918, was replaced in 1930 by a larger concrete building with a unique Lamella roof, again designed by William Distin.

A full range of cure cottages were available in the village to cater to every degree of illness. The changing addresses of a patient in the process of curing often charted her or his personal progress in the battle against tuberculosis ... or the state of their personal finances. Almost all patients made their own housing and medical arrangements based on their financial resources and their doctor's recommendations. If their cure was particularly difficult or lengthy, they would often try to move to less expensive cottages or to the subsidized sanatoria such as Trudeau San or Will Rogers Memorial Hospital.

Because of the level of attention required, nursing cottages were not as common as those for patients who were more mobile. "Up cottages" for patients well enough to be ambulatory were basically rooming houses or, if meals were served, boarding houses. Nursing cottages offered bed tray service or nursing care.

Eventually patients could improve enough to move into their own apartment or house, sometimes still hiring housekeepers or ordering meals from nearby cottages. Those who arrived with family members or attendants rented full apartments or houses with cure porches provided for the patient.

The psychological aspects of healing were considered an important part of the curing process, and for this reason, many cure cottages catered to specific nationalities and ethnic groups, or those who worked in similar industries. There were cure cottages for Greeks, Cubans, and blacks, kosher cottages for Jews, and other cottages for World War I veterans, vaudeville performers, and those who worked in the circus and the theater. Corporations such as DuPont and Endicott Johnson Shoes supported the operation of cottages in Saranac Lake to care for their employees who had become ill with tuberculosis, in this way respecting their obligations in the days before health insurance. Many patients first developed lung problems working in the debris-clogged air of factories, particularly in the textile industry. Leather-working industries also seemed to have a high percentage of workers who developed tuberculosis, most likely transmitted through tanned skins from tuberculosis animals. If caught early enough, tuberculosis could be put into almost permanent remission, but the disease never totally disappeared. If an ex-patient over-extended himself through stress or work, the tuberculosis could flare up again with disastrous results. Similarly, if the disease had advanced enough to seriously damage the lungs, or was a particularly fast-moving strain known as "galloping tuberculosis," the chances of recovery were slim.

Those patients whose health continued to deteriorate sometimes moved to the home of a sympathetic nurse to spend their final days in homelike surroundings. Their bodies were either shipped back to their families by railroad or they were buried in Pine Ridge or St. Bernard's Cemetery. A popular American slang phrase in the early part of the century, "a one-way ticket to Saranac, " spoke volumes about both the fame which Saranac Lake had as a center for the battle against tuberculosis, and the difficulty in beating the disease at a time when great numbers of tuberculosis patients never returned alive.

Because of public misconceptions about tuberculosis and its contagious nature, often patients were disowned by their family and friends. Even when their cure was declared complete, many chose to remain in the Saranac Lake area. Others like Trudeau found that they could not leave these mountains without suffering a relapse of their disease. The community benefited from the extraordinary talents of the many ex-patients who stayed.

Almost all of Dr. Trudeau's staff were either recovered tuberculous patients, or related to someone who had had it. Dr. Edward R. Baldwin arrived in 1892 to cure at the San; he eventually took over Trudeau’s tuberculosis research. Dr. Lawrason Brown, director of the San from 1901-1929, was another recovered patient. Many of the tuberculosis centers that opened in America between 1900 and 1930 were staffed by men who had studied and often, cured, in Saranac Lake. The prominent local architects William L. Coulter, William H. Scopes, and Maurice Feustmann all first came to the village as patients. Many of the later cottages were run by former patients whose cures had been successful. Even though their tuberculosis was no longer active, most former patients continued to use cure porches and follow the curing routine as a preventative measure for the rest of their lives.

The patient influx peaked in 1922, when more than sixteen hundred new patients came to the village, joining others who had been curing for two to four years and longer. Many were veterans of the First World War. The 1924 construction of Sunmount, a new curing facility operated by the Veterans Administration moved many of these men (and the associated jobs) to Tupper Lake after local doctors opposed its location in the village for a variety of reasons.

The pace of growth nevertheless continued through the 1920s, until the village reached its peak in 1931 with a population of 8000. By this time, medical experience had begun to show positive effects for the fresh air cure in any location, refuting the belief that it was exclusively the Adirondack air that restored health. Local counties throughout the state began to build sanitoria for local patients and the numbers of patients arriving in Saranac Lake began to diminish. New regulation requiring that all patients be housed in single rooms was in part an attempt to assure full occupancy in the cure cottages of the village.

The Stock Market Crash of October 1929 was a Black Friday for the cure cottage industry as well. As the bottom dropped out of the national economy, so too fell the number of tuberculosis sufferers who could afford the luxury of curing in the nation's premier tuberculosis curing center. Local sanatoria throughout New York State and elsewhere provided charity care, and experience had proven that with proper care, tuberculous patients could successfully cure in their own homes.

Trudeau Sanatorium continued to take in patients through the 1930s, eventually expanding into a complex of sixty buildings with a post office of its own, but the number of patients in the village slowly and surely began to fall. Almost no new buildings were constructed in town after 1932.

Patients continued to come to Saranac Lake from all over the world, however, and the village maintained its cosmopolitan nature throughout the twenties and thirties. Prominent citizens from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and other South American countries cured in cottages such as the Gonzalez Cottage in Cottage Row. Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon died of tuberculosis in a local cottage in 1944. Theatrical people, ball players, politicians and gangsters all spent time on the porches of Saranac Lake.

Footnotes

1. Gallos, p.19.
2. Seaver, p. 383.