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Saranac Lake, “The Little City in the Adirondacks,” is a small urban area, situated in the middle of the 6 million-acre Adirondack Park. Early development was driven by exploitation of the natural resources of water power and abundant lumber, but by the 1880s the economic base of the community had begun to shift to the fresh-air treatment of tuberculosis, a change driven by the presence of Dr. E. L. Trudeau, a patient himself.
Developed when most inhabitants arrived by train and doctors prescribed timed, daily walks for patients, the compact village is well-adapted to a healthy lifestyle. Most housing in the Village proper was built prior to 1940, when Saranac Lake’s emphasis on scientific research and treatment made it the premier tuberculosis center in the United States—even in the Western Hemisphere.
The village was first settled in 1819, when Jacob Smith Moody followed the Old Military Road (now Pine Street) to a spot near the Saranac River, where he built a log cabin and cleared land for a subsistence farm that included Moody Pond. His son, Cortis, was the first settler’s child born here, and son Martin went on to settle in Tupper Lake. Pine Ridge Cemetery surrounds the family burial ground on former Moody farmland.
Captain Pliny Miller came here as an investor, to develop waterpower on the Saranac River. By 1827 Miller had built a dam and a sawmill near the site of the present dam and the Power and Light Building [NR], now used as Village offices.
A third settler, Colonel Milote Baker, settled a bit further along the Old Military Road where it crosses the Saranac River, planning to supply furs to city dwellers. Near the present Triangle Park, he built a small hotel that grew to include a store and post office. His brother, Hillel Baker, made his own collection of books available as the first library.
In 1849, William F. Martin established his hotel out of the village, on Lower Saranac Lake. Advertised as the “Gateway to the Wilderness,” it became the jumping-off point for hunting and fishing excursions, including the “Philosopher’s Camp,” led by local guides.
In 1872, Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau arrived at Paul Smith’s hotel, about 12 miles outside of the village, suffering from tuberculosis, expecting to die in the surroundings where he had loved to hunt. Surprisingly, his health improved in the outdoors. After several unsuccessful attempts to return home to New York City, Dr. Trudeau and his wife and children settled in Saranac Lake in the winters and spent their summers at Paul Smith’s. As he gained strength, he began to treat a few well-off patients, who could afford long stays as if they were on vacation. By 1876, 700 people lived here, engaged in subsistence farming, lumbering, guiding visitors in the woods, and providing other support services. The first patients to spend the winter in the Adirondacks for their health stayed in boarding houses and rented quarters in Saranac Lake. To extend the benefits of the fresh-air treatment to working people, Dr. Trudeau founded the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium in 1884; the name (and spelling) were changed to Trudeau Sanatorium [NR] at his death in 1915. The first patient cottage was called “Little Red” [NR].
Though the sanatorium was based on models of climatic treatment that Dr. Trudeau read about in European medical journals, in 1882 Dr. Robert Koch in Germany announced a scientific discovery—he had found the physical cause of tuberculosis—the tubercle bacillus—under the microscope. For Christmas in 1884, a medical publisher who was the husband of one of his patients gave Dr. Trudeau a complete handwritten translation of Dr. Koch’s paper. Working in Saranac Lake, far from any hospital, Dr. Trudeau replicated all of Dr. Koch’s experiments and then began making original ones. Saranac Lake became a health resort based on science. In 1894 the stone Saranac Laboratory [NR] was built, now the headquarters of Historic Saranac Lake.
So many more patients arrived than the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium could accommodate that the tiny hamlet of guides and lumbermen became a sanatorium village. With the fresh-air treatment a whole new technology developed, and a building type known as a "cure cottage" [NR] evolved. Tuberculosis was no respecter of wealth or position; all levels of society were represented here, from the first factory girls in Little Red to scions of nationally prominent families.
The village drew many famous visitors and health seekers. Saranac Lake's most famous patient, Robert Louis Stevenson, stayed in Andrew Baker's cottage at 44 Stevenson Lane. Stevenson arrived by carriage on October 3, 1887, from the nearest railhead at Loon Lake. By the time he left on April 16, 1888, the Chateaugay Railroad had reached Saranac Lake, at the site of the present Union Depot [NR], making it much easier for patients and visitors to the hotels to reach the village. At the same time Stevenson’s fame increased public interest in Dr. Trudeau’s sanatorium. As the local logging industry flagged, tuberculosis treatment became the principal economic basis for the area.Saranac Lake’s Winter Carnival was first held in 1897 to entertain patients during the long stretch between Christmas and Adirondack spring. Its centerpiece, the Ice Palace, was first built in 1898, designed by the first resident architect, William L. Coulter.
Two works by Gutzon Borglum, sculptor of Mt. Rushmore, are installed in Saranac Lake: his memorial plaque (1915) at the Robert Louis Stevenson Cottage, and the heroic portrait, a fine likeness, of Dr. E. L. Trudeau (1918) now at Trudeau Institute on Algonquin Avenue.
In 1927 Will Rogers Hospital [NR], the last of the institutional sanatoria, was built in Saranac Lake; it is now operating as Saranac Village at Will Rogers, an assisted living facility. Around the same time, the architects William Scopes and Maurice Feustmann were also designing the Harrietstown Town Hall [NR] and the Hotel Saranac, now listed as an Historic Hotel of America by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
During the summers of 1943 & 1944, Hungarian composer and refugee from World War II, Bela Bartók, ill with leukemia, rested at the Sageman Cottage [NR], 63 Park Avenue, where he wrote his Concerto for Orchestra in 1943. In the summer of 1945, he and his wife Ditta rented a cabin behind the house at 58 Riverside Drive.When Trudeau Sanatorium closed in 1954, after the discovery of antibiotic treatments for tuberculosis, the property was sold to the American Management Association in 1957, and the proceeds invested in a new scientific research facility, Trudeau Institute, on Lower Saranac Lake. Experiments underway at the Saranac Laboratory were transferred to the new facility when it opened in 1964, and Little Red and the Trudeau statue were moved to the new site as memorials.
[NR] denotes listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Follow links or click National Register for more information about these listings.
©2008 Historic Saranac Lake. All rights reserved. |
Historic photographs courtesy of the Adirondack Room, Saranac Lake Free Library, unless otherwise noted. Copy and reuse restrictions apply. |
Historic Saranac Lake