 Image of the week: A ski jumper on Blood Hill, c. 1918. Blood Hill was named for the Blood family, who settled in Saranac Lake in the 1860s. Ski jumping was popular on the hill beginning in the late 1800s. The Riverside Inn can be seen under the jumper's left arm; this hotel was opened in 1860 by Orlando Blood and was in operation until the 1930s. Today, it is the site of Riverside Park.
Learn more on our wiki! [Historic Saranac Lake Collection, TCR 662. Courtesy of Natalie Leduc.]
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 Image of the week: Amy Jones (right) and an unidentified woman pose with paintings at an outdoor art show in Saranac Lake, 1935. Jones was an accomplished artist who accompanied her ailing husband, David Blair Jones, to Saranac Lake for the cure in 1930. While her husband cured, Jones taught watercolor painting at the Saranac Lake Study and Craft Guild and was a founding member of the Saranac Lake Art League.
Learn more about Jones and other artists in our Art of the Cure exhibit online! Historic Saranac Lake is in the process of a major image cataloging project with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. We will be sharing fascinating images of life in Saranac Lake throughout history in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, but our fans online will get the first peek at the images! Have a request for images you want to see? Let us know! [Historic Saranac Lake Collection, TCR 459. Courtesy of Lucy Jones Berk.]   We want to say "welcome aboard!" to our new Transcription Technician, Mikayla Ploof! Mikayla is joining us for the next 6 months to transcribe approximately 13,000 patient and cure cottage information cards from the T.B. Society, donated to us earlier in the year by the Voluntary Health Association. These records date from approximately 1913 to 1956, and include applications for treatment at Trudeau Sanatorium, registries of nurses and cure cottages, and records items loaned to patients.
The transcription of these incredibly important records is made possible by a generous grant from the Northern New York Library Network, and will allow HSL staff to quickly search for records for genealogists and researchers. This grant will also fund the eventual launch of our online collections database. We also want to say thank you to our awesome volunteers who are helping with the transcription of these and other patient records!  On this Giving Tuesday, we hope you will give to Historic Saranac Lake! Click below to give to our annual fund, and read on for our letter and annual report! Dear Friends, You know that our mission — to preserve and share area history and architecture to build a stronger community — matters now more than ever. Historic Saranac Lake is one of the key local institutions that holds our community together and builds a brighter future. Your membership dues and other donations make so much possible. Thank you! Your donations have supported oral histories, the preservation of our museum collection, presentations for school groups, advocacy for architectural preservation, Letters from the Porch, and so much more! At the end of each year, we appeal to our members and friends for a special contribution. Please help us make a strong start in the new year with a gift to our Annual Fund! It’s been a challenging year for all of us, but we are here, and we are gearing up for a new day. Next spring, the hammers will start flying, as we begin the work of establishing an exemplary museum campus in beautiful downtown Saranac Lake that presents the rich history of the region. Please help ensure our programs in the coming year with a gift to the Annual Fund. Together, let’s build a stronger community by making history matter! Sincerely, Amy Catania, Executive Director  We're joining in with the Museum of the City of New York for a virtual #MuseumThanksgivingParade! These parade shots come from Winter Carnivals past and present, from 1913 to 2019!
Learn more about Winter Carnival parades throughout history on our wiki.  Dr. Edward R. Baldwin prepares to carve a turkey in the Baldwin House on Church Street, most likely for a Thanksgiving meal in the 1920s. Dr. Baldwin came to Saranac Lake with tuberculosis after medical school, and was hired by Dr. Edward L. Trudeau to work at the newly built Saranac Laboratory. He eventually served as Director of the Laboratory, along with many other scientific and civic pursuits. Happy Thanksgiving Week!
Learn more about Dr. Baldwin on our wiki: https://localwiki.org/hsl/Edward_R._Baldwin Historic Saranac Lake is in the process of a major image cataloging project with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. We will be sharing fascinating images of life in Saranac Lake throughout history in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, but our fans online will get the first peek at the images! Have a request for images you want to see? Let us know! [Historic Saranac Lake Collection, TCR 448, courtesy of Barbara Baldwin Knapp.]  Our next Veteran-themed Tuberculosis Thursday feature is John Baxter Black! Black served in World War I, and was in active service in France when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1918. He was sent to Saranac Lake to cure his intestinal tuberculosis, and his health improved over the course of five years. Unfortunately, he developed an infection following a surgical procedure in Montreal, and died on May 16, 1923.
Following his death, the Black Family of Mansfield, Ohio donated the addition of a new wing on the Saranac Laboratory, including the John Black Memorial Library. This portrait of John Baxter Black in repose during his cure hangs in the John Black Room at the Saranac Laboratory Museum. Learn more about Black's time in Saranac Lake on our wiki.  Béla Bartók with his wife Ditta and son Peter, in Saranac Lake. Photograph from "My Father" by Peter Bartók. by Amy Catania "I have been so upset by world events that my mind has been almost completely paralyzed.” — Béla Bartók In the midst of the dark days of World War II, a frail man named Béla Bartók came to Saranac Lake for his health. Although he was one of the greatest composers in human history, many Saranac Lakers might have seen him as just another invalid, tiny and pale, wrapped in his dark cape against the cold Adirondack weather. Bartók and his second wife Ditta fled their native Hungary eighty years ago, as fascism and antisemitism swept across Europe. He had dedicated his life not only to composing, but also collecting and arranging the folk music of Eastern Europe. Nazi Germany was threatening to erase the cultures of the Roma and other peasant peoples of the region. In the face of such terror, Bartók was depressed, impoverished, and sick with a form of leukemia that acted like tuberculosis. He and his wife moved from one cramped, loud, New York City apartment to another. He had ceased composing. In the summer of 1943, the Bartóks found refuge in Saranac Lake. Here, wrote his son Peter, "he found the peace and tranquility suitable for composing…. My father was obviously contented; his surroundings were as spartan as the interior of a Hungarian peasant cottage -- a reminder of a world with such fond associations for him.”  “We are very happy indeed to stay in this wonderful quiet place. August 4, 1945.” Bartók Cabin guestbook, Historic Saranac Lake Collection. Bartók spent three summers in Saranac Lake, where the quiet and natural environment inspired some of his greatest works — the Concerto for Orchestra, the Viola Concerto, and the Third Piano Concerto. In his music, he integrated peasant melodies of Eastern Europe with the birdsong of the Adirondacks. Here, under the cloud of terrible world events, he found a measure of hope.  Image and melody of the Rufous-sided Towhee. The birdsong is heard in the second movement of the Third Piano Concerto. Images from "My Father" by Peter Bartók. The cabin off of Riverside Drive, where Bartók stayed the last summer of his life in 1945, was saved from demolition thanks to a Romanian pianist named Cristina Stanescu. She had come to Saranac Lake to perform with the Gregg Smith Singers one summer some thirty years ago. While staying at Fogarty’s Bed and Breakfast, she learned about the decrepit cabin down the street where Bartók once stayed. The composer was a hero to Cristina. When she was just six years old, her first teacher in Romania had taught her Bartók’s music even though it was banned under Communism. To Christina’s teacher, Bartók represented friendship among the peoples of Eastern Europe, and his modernist compositions had become a symbol in Europe of anti-fascist resistance. Cristina Stanescu raised the alarm to save the cabin. Emily Fogarty, Mary Hotaling, George Pappastavrou, Lex Dashnaw, and Doug March took up the cause, and they worked with a team of volunteers and musicians to raise the funds to save the cabin. Today Historic Saranac Lake provides tours of the Bartók Cabin in the summers, and many interesting people from around the world visit each year. One recent visitor to the cabin was Brian Ward. His grandmother, Corneila Hamvas, fled from the Nazis to the United States with her Jewish family. Back in Budapest, when Cornelia was seven years old, Béla Bartók taught her how to play the piano. This fall, standing in the humble cabin with Cornelia’s grandson, the past felt very close at hand. We listened for Bartók’s birds, calling in the woods. “My own idea… is the brotherhood of peoples, brotherhood in spite of wars and conflicts, I try -- to the best of my ability -- to serve this idea in my music; therefore, I don't reject any influence, be it Slovakian, Romanian, Arabic, or from any other source.” — Béla Bartók  Brian Ward in the Bartók Cabin, 2020. Courtesy of Historic Saranac Lake.  Continuing our Veteran-themed Tuberculosis Thursday posts, today we're highlighting the Arlington Hotel! The hotel was located on the northeast corner of Broadway and Bloomingdale Avenue, and was built sometime between 1895 and 1899. After the hotel abruptly closed in 1919--the manager disappeared with anything moveable and of value--it was reopened as a vocational school for tubercular Veterans of World War I. It opened with classes on salesmanship and law, and offered commercial and general education courses. Ernie Burnett remembered it as the first meeting place for the "Vets' Post" in his "Our Town" column in 1954.
Read more about the history of the Arlington on our wiki. [Photograph of the Arlington Hotel, courtesy of the Adirondack Research Room at the Saranac Lake Free Library.] |
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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
89 Church Street, Suite 2, Saranac Lake, New York 12983
(518) 891-4606 - mail@historicsaranaclake.org
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© 2020 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. Made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Also supported by an Essex County Arts Council Cultural Assistance Program Grant supported by the Essex County Board of Supervisors.
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