 It's Tuberculosis Thursday! Saranac Lake is all lit up right now for the Saranac Lake Area Chamber of Commerce's Light Up the Town event, which made us think of this photo from Trudeau Sanatorium. This glowing tree was seen in front of the Mellon Library at Trudeau in 1931. Have you explored around town to see all of the holiday cheer?
Learn more about the Mellon Library on our wiki: https://localwiki.org/hsl/Mellon_Library [Historic Saranac Lake Collection, ACC 2020.010. Courtesy of Jan Dudones.]
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 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.  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.]  In honor of Veterans Day, we're going to be sharing Tuberculosis Thursday posts about veterans all month long. The first is one of our most frequently-asked-about places, Sunmount Veterans Administration Hospital! This facility, located on the edge of Tupper Lake, opened in 1924. The VA created the hospital to treat veterans following the huge surge of TB cases among veterans of World War I. It was in operation as a VA hospital until 1965.
Prior to the opening of the hospital, the VA had contracts to house tubercular veterans at various private cure cottages in Saranac Lake. To learn more about the history of this facility, visit our wiki.  Last month we shared a Tuberculosis Thursday post about a photo album that was recently donated to the collection, and it inspired another wonderful donation! We were delighted to receive an album kept by Lillian Synoracki Wilczak (standing to the left of the sign) while taking the cure at Stony Wold Sanatorium from 1928-1930. Her granddaughter, Karen Jacobs, donated the album to us so that Lillian's experience can be saved and shared as part of our local history. We can't wait to share other photos from the album and learn more about Lillian's story, but in the meantime, check out these wonderful snapshots of life at Stony Wold. Thank you again for your thoughtful donation, Karen! Do you have a relative who took the cure in Saranac Lake? We'd love to hear their stories! Historic Saranac Lake Collection, TCR 646. Courtesy of Karen Jacobs.    For this week's Tuberculosis Thursday, we want to share about a wonderful visit we had last weekend. Kathy Sader came to Saranac Lake to learn more about where her great-grandfather, Paul Ludwig Ott, stayed while seeking treatment for tuberculosis. Unfortunately, Paul's cure was not successful and he died in February of 1910. He had one young son, Gordon Joseph Ott, Kathy's grandfather. Kathy brought an album of photographs from Paul's time in Saranac Lake for us to scan, and we can't wait to share more of them!
Kathy and her husband Mike had a great visit at the museum, and they also got to go see the site where 9 McComb Street (the cottage where Paul stayed) once stood. Thanks for sharing these photographs from 1909 and today, Kathy! Do you have a family member who came to Saranac Lake to seek the cure? We'd love to hear more! See some of the photographs from Paul Ott's time in Saranac Lake on our wiki.  Did you know that September is National Happy Cat Month? It's Tuberculosis Thursday, but we're not sure how happy the cat is in this photograph of Dr. Edward R. Baldwin, Mary Ives Baldwin, and an unidentified friend (and unidentified cat!). Dr. Baldwin came to Trudeau Sanatorium with TB in the mid-1900s, and eventually became a close personal friend and colleague of Dr. Trudeau. The Baldwins lived across the street from the Saranac Laboratory on Church Street, and Dr. Baldwin was eventually Director of the Laboratory.
We received an amazing gift of the Baldwin Family archives from Dr. Baldwin's great-granddaughter Barbara Baldwin Knapp in 2018, and we're enjoying learning more about their history and sharing it with you! Visit our wiki to learn more.  It's Tuberculosis Thursday, and this week we're highlighting a recent donation to the collection. This photo album was compiled by Eddy Whitby, who came to Saranac Lake to cure and ended up spending the rest of his life here! He went on to be a co-founder of Duryee Real Estate Co., was Village President (now known as mayor) in 1919, and served on the village board in 1927, among other civic accomplishments. His album shows photographs of his fellow patients "the Conklinites," his family, and life around Saranac Lake from 1901 until his death in 1927. We're looking forward to exploring the rest of the album to learn about Eddy's life in Saranac Lake! Learn more about Eddy on our wiki, including a lesson on following driving laws! Historic Saranac Lake Collection, TCR #636. Courtesy of Randall Baldwin.
Adelaide Crapsey was born on September 9, 1878, so we're returning to our Tuberculosis Thursday posts by sharing this video from Curiously Adirondack and Josh Clement Productions.
Adelaide came to Saranac Lake to take the cure in 1913, and unfortunately died from her illness a year later. Click above to listen to this reading of Adelaide's poem, "To the Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window." Visit our wiki to learn more about Adelaide's life and contributions to poetry.  It's Tuberculosis Thursday, so we thought we'd share more about cure porch design! This week's Letter from the Porch got us thinking about porches and how their design varies, especially locally. This photograph came from a series examining the differences in cure porch architecture, and we thought it was interesting to see a porch under construction. This photograph was taken at Trudeau Sanatorium, or as it would have been called then, Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium, prior to 1904.
Want to learn more about the defining features of cure porches? Visit our wiki! Do you have a cure porch on your home? What features does it have? [Historic Saranac Lake Collection, courtesy of Ted Comstock.] |
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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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