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Friday Link: Pandemic Perspectives on NCPR

7/30/2021

6 Comments

 
Thanks to Todd Moe at North Country Public Radio for checking out our Pandemic Perspectives exhibit and sharing about it! If you didn't catch the interview on the radio, you can listen to it online. We've had some great conversations with museum visitors about the exhibit and their experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. Come pay us a visit!
6 Comments

History s'Peaks Challenge!

7/29/2021

5 Comments

 
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We're so excited to participate in the new High Peaks-inspired museum challenge, History s'Peaks! Participants can get stamps at six local museums and complete their History s'Peaks challenge! You can pick up a card at participating museums and get started on a history-inspired adventure. Once completed, patches are available for $5!

Thanks to the Lake Placid History Museum for organizing this challenge. We're happy to collaborate with them and the Adirondack History Museum, Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center, John Brown Farm State Historic Site, and Lake Placid Olympic Museum! Can you complete the challenge?!
5 Comments

Event: Cure Porch Architecture

7/21/2021

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Join us at 10:00AM on Wednesday, August 4 for a morning of celebrating cure porch architecture and educating our neighbors about historic preservation. We need your help to spread the word! Meet at the Cure Porch on Wheels parked behind the museum for a brief training with Executive Director Amy Catania on cure porch architecture and the importance of historic preservation. Then help us educate the local community with a walk through Helen Hill Historic District distributing flyers. We will leave from the museum following the introduction at the Cure Porch on Wheels and walk through the Helen Hill neighborhood, rain or shine!

This event is free and open to the public. Advance registration is not required. This program is part of a series of educational talks and programs sponsored by a Humanities New York Action Grant.

5 Comments

EVENT - CPOW at The Station

7/18/2021

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For the first of four local history days this summer and fall, the Cure Porch on Wheels will be visiting the Summer Market at the Station in Downtown Onchiota on Saturday, July 24. Come check it out to learn more about cure porch architecture and see components of Historic Saranac Lake's new exhibit "Pandemic Perspectives." We'll be hanging out from 12-2PM!

Learn more about the Station on their website.
5 Comments

New Exhibit Open today!

7/14/2021

6 Comments

 
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Our new exhibit, Pandemic Perspectives, is now open to the public! Twelve exhibit panels placed throughout the museum invite visitors to explore connections between their personal experience during the current pandemic and Saranac Lake’s history as a community that welcomed people suffering from infectious disease. Each panel explores a particular reaction, from positive feelings like “resilience” or “gratitude,” to more difficult ones such as “loneliness” and “fear.”

Be sure to come visit the museum to explore the new exhibit and share your pandemic perspective.

Our thanks to the Lake Champlain Basin Program, Humanities New York, and the New York State Council on the Arts for supporting this exhibit and related public programs on the Cure Porch on Wheels. Stay tuned for details about upcoming events!

Read the full press release on our website.
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Public Programs Coordinator Mahala Nyberg hangs the new exhibit banner at the Saranac Laboratory Museum.
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Last night, we held an opening reception with Members of Historic Saranac Lake, and we were so happy to see two nurses from Adirondack Health at the party, Lisa Keegan and Sara Diaz. Lisa shared some of her photographs for the exhibit, including the title image of Sara.
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6 Comments

Image of the Week: Trudeau School of Tuberculosis

7/13/2021

4 Comments

 
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This photograph shows the first class of the Trudeau School of Tuberculosis in the Saranac Laboratory 1917. The Trudeau School was founded by Dr. Edward R. Baldwin, and offered six-week summer courses for physicians to learn the latest treatment methods for TB. This photograph and others past and present are featured in a new special exhibit, Pandemic Perspectives, opening this week at the Saranac Laboratory Museum. The exhibit invites visitors to compare their experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic to the TB era in Saranac Lake. Stay tuned for more on this special exhibit!

[Historic Saranac Lake Collection, 2021.4. Courtesy of Trudeau Institute.]
4 Comments

Paddling Rabbit Island

7/11/2021

45 Comments

 
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Edward Livingston Trudeau conducted research about tubercolosis on Rabbit Island on Spitfire Lake in the 19th century. Photo by Mike Lynch.
It’s not an island that would draw your attention as you paddled past it, but its role in the history of tuberculosis and the area is unquestioned. The study gave credibility to Trudeau’s work, especially among doctors.

Want to experience both nature and history on this beautiful July day? Check out this great article from Mike Lynch and the Adirondack Explorer on paddling around Rabbit Island.
45 Comments

Tuberculosis Thursday: Mammoth Cave

7/8/2021

4 Comments

 
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This Tuberculosis Thursday, we want to share about some interesting TB history from elsewhere in the country. About 40 years before Dr. Trudeau's development of the "fresh air cure" in Saranac Lake, Dr. John Croghan experimented with using caves to treat TB patients. Dr. Croghan purchased Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, hoping that the cool, still air in the caves would improve the health of patients. He brought 16 patients to the cave in the winter of 1842, to live in two stone cabins and eight wooden buildings.

Dr. Croghan's cave sanatorium was unsuccessful, as the damp, dark, unventilated conditions worsened the patients conditions, and five of the sixteen patients died. After just five months, Dr. Croghan returned to the surface with the remaining patients, and abandoned the treatment buildings.

This attempted treatment method is of course in stark contrast to the method developed in Saranac Lake, where patients would spend as much time as possible in the fresh air and sunlight. This postcard (c. 1912) was recently acquired by Historic Saranac Lake and shows tourists outside one of the remaining stone cabins in Mammoth Cave.

If you want to learn more about Dr. Croghan's sanatorium in Mammoth Cave, check out this fascinating article from Mammoth Cave National Park.

[Historic Saranac Lake Collection, TCR 666.]
4 Comments

Reminder: A Wild Idea Book Talk

7/7/2021

29 Comments

 
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Don't forget, our virtual "A Wild Idea" book talk with author Brad Edmondson is coming up tomorrow at 6:00PM! If you haven't registered yet, please do so using this form.

We will send a link to the Zoom meeting via email to all registered participants. We look forward to you all joining the discussion tomorrow!

29 Comments

Become a Member Today!

7/6/2021

21 Comments

 
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Dear Friends,

Hello again! We are so excited to welcome you back to the museum!

Thanks to donations and membership support from friends like you, our museum doors are open again, and our future is bright! We have accomplished so much in the past year. Together, we have explored and preserved history and architecture through countless talks, tours, articles, and special events. We are proud to say that work is advancing on the Trudeau Building museum expansion project, and we plan to go out to bid for construction in January 2022.

In July we will open a new exhibit at the Saranac Laboratory Museum titled, “Pandemic Perspectives.” We look forward to showing it to you! Members are invited to the special opening party on July 13.

Please become a member today, and join us as we build a strong community. You can join or renew online today!

Thank you!

Amy Jones, Board President
Amy Catania, Executive Director
21 Comments
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Historic Saranac Lake at the Saranac Laboratory Museum
​89 Church Street, Suite 2, Saranac Lake, New York 12983
​(518) 891-4606 - mail@historicsaranaclake.org ​
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Historic Saranac Lake is funded in part by:
  • the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature;
  • a Humanities New York SHARP Grant with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the federal American Rescue Plan Act;
  • an Essex County Arts Council Cultural Assistance Program Grant supported by the Essex County Board of Supervisors.
Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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​© 2023 Historic Saranac Lake. All Rights Reserved. Historic photographs from Historic Saranac Lake Collection, unless otherwise noted. Copy and reuse restrictions apply. ​
  • Visit
  • Events
    • CHAPEL LIGHTS
  • About
    • Visit
    • Historic Saranac Lake
    • The Museum
    • Trudeau Building >
      • Contractor Portal 2023
    • PRESS Room
    • History Matters Blog
  • Research
    • Collections
    • Oral History Project
    • Local Wiki
    • Resources
    • HISTORY MATTERS Blog
  • Projects
    • Trudeau Building
    • Architectural Preservation
    • Collections
    • The Bartok Cabin
    • Oral History Project
    • Cure Porch on Wheels
    • School Outreach
    • Special Exhibits >
      • Pandemic Perspectives
  • Support Us
  • Contact
  • Museum Store