• Visit
  • Events
  • About
    • Visit
    • Historic Saranac Lake
    • The Museum
    • Trudeau Building
    • 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
HISTORIC SARANAC LAKE
  • Visit
  • Events
  • About
    • Visit
    • Historic Saranac Lake
    • The Museum
    • Trudeau Building
    • 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

Women's History Month: Betty Temming Koop

3/26/2019

1 Comment

 
Picture
Picture
Our Women's History Month feature today is Elizabeth Temming Koop, known as Betty. Koop was cured of tuberculosis at the Trudeau Sanatorium, where she met and married Martin Koop in 1944. The couple worked together making hand-wrought jewelry and eventually opened the Temming Art Studio. After retiring from the jewelry business in 1971, Koop and her daughter Theresa owned and operated the Cinderella Shop in the Hotel Saranac until 1981. She moved from Saranac Lake in 1982 to live with her daughter in Malta.

Temming Jewelry was a must-have accessory in Saranac Lake, including custom name-plate bracelets for local girls. To see more examples of items made by the Temming Art Studio, and learn more about Koop's life, visit our wiki!

And be sure to stay tuned for our upcoming special exhibit, "Art of the Cure," opening this June! This exhibit will feature TB patient artists, writers, architects, and more, while exploring the occupational therapy programs that were a key component of TB treatment here in Saranac Lake. The exhibit will feature works by Betty Koop, Charlotte Geffken, Amy Jones, and many other women (and men!) who came for the cure!
Learn more about Betty Temming Koop!
1 Comment

Women's History Month: Nurses

3/25/2019

1 Comment

 
Picture
Picture
For Museum Monday we want to share this nurse's cape from our collection to highlight the work for nurses in Saranac Lake for Women's History Month! This particular cape belonged to Juanita "Nita" Hayman Worthington, who trained at Bellevue School of Nursing and came to Trudeau Sanatorium for her health. Following her cure, she began a nursing career in the area that saw her serve first at the Trudeau Sanatorium, where she met her husband-to-be Ed when he arrived as a new patient. Later she worked as doctor's nurse for Drs. Woodruff, Merkel, and Decker.

Worthington was one of many hundreds of nurses who worked in the TB industry in Saranac Lake. Many of these nurses were patients who stayed to care for patients following their own treatment for TB. To read more about the fascinating and inspiring stories of Worthington and many other nurses, as well as about the history of the D. Ogden Mills Training School for Nurses at Trudeau Sanatorium, visit our wiki!

[Historic Saranac Lake collection, courtesy of Jan Worthington Dudones.]
Learn more about nurses!
1 Comment

Women's History Month: Mary Prescott

3/22/2019

1 Comment

 
Picture
Learn more about Mary Prescott!
It’s Fan Friday, and we received a request to share the story of Mary Prescott for Women’s History Month! Mary R. Prescott was a young heiress from New Bedford, Massachusetts, who came to Saranac Lake to cure in 1895. At Dr. Edward L. Trudeau's urging, she made it her mission to help patients too poor to afford a cure cottage. In 1901, Prescott rented a cottage at 12 Shepard Avenue, where, along with a tent pitched in the yard, she housed four patients, a nurse and two maids.

In 1905, she opened the twenty-bed Reception Hospital at the end of nearby Franklin Avenue; in 1925, it handled nearly a hundred patients, with Mary Prescott covering the annual deficit. It was designed by the new architectural firm of Scopes and Feustmann, who entered and won a competition to design it. Prescott would personally visit every patient every Sunday evening.
Over time, conditions changed, and it began taking patients for longer periods, and treating fewer per year; in 1943 its name was changed to Prescott House, in honor of its benefactor. By 1949, a shortage of funds led to the closing of the hospital, and the trustees sought another use for the building. The Saranac Lake Study and Craft Guild was in need of additional space, and on March 27, 1950, the building and all other assets of the Hospital were given to the Guild.

The Guild maintained a center there for several years, offering business education, academic and technical subjects, including X-ray technician training in addition to the traditional arts and crafts courses. However, the development of effective antibiotic treatments for tuberculosis led to a gradual reduction in the number of patients interested in the Guild's offerings, and courses were dropped until only the X-ray school was left. On October 9, 1968, Prescott House was given to the newly formed North Country Community College; the X-ray program became part of the curriculum. However, the college decided that, due to the building's need of maintenance and its distance from the campus, it would put the property up for public auction.

On January 4, 1969, the building was acquired by Chester Fobare and Richard Yorkey, who carried out extensive repairs. The building became a girls' dormitory for NCCC for a time. In 2017, Debra Thuet purchased Prescott House and turned it into a short and long-term lodging facility and restored the integrity of the building.

Prescott died in New Bedford, MA at the age of 89. Her obituary noted that she “was a very outgoing person, with a lively sense of humor and a keen mind… She was especially fond of poetry.”

To learn more about Prescott’s life’s work and the history of the Prescott House, visit our wiki!
1 Comment

Women's History Month: Mildred Blanchet

3/21/2019

2 Comments

 
Today’s Tuberculosis Thursday Women’s History Month feature is Mildred Blanchet! Blanchet was an artist and craftswoman who met her future husband, Dr. Sidney Blanchet, when they were both tuberculous patients at Trudeau Sanatorium.

After her recovery from tuberculosis, the death of her father, and marriage to Dr. Blanchet she moved to 27 Church Street (now 49 Church Street). In the first years much of her time was spent taking care of her invalid mother. She also worked both in the Workshop at Trudeau Sanatorium and also at the Saranac Lake Study and Craft Guild. She apparently created the harlequin girl logo for an early Winter Carnival sometime in about 1913. Blanchet was a talented painter and she worked in a variety of mediums from watercolors, bas relief, pencil and oils to painting furniture.
Picture
Picture
After her husband’s death she went to work and live at the Trudeau Sanatorium with her youngest son Jeremy and worked as an occupational therapist in the crafts program. She encouraged people to use their leisure to do things with their hands. She got men knitting. She made designs for hooked rugs and did crewel work or hand embroidery. She was one of the judges for a Craft Guild art contest in September 1941.
To learn more about Blanchet and see examples of her work, visit our wiki!
Learn more about Mildred Blanchet!
2 Comments

Women's History Month: Martha Reben

3/20/2019

1 Comment

 
Picture
Learn more about Martha Reben!
Our next Women’s History Month Wednesday Writer is Martha Reben! Reben (born Rebentisch) was an author who wrote The Healing Woods (1952), The Way of the Wilderness (1954), and A Sharing of Joy (1963). These were all memoirs of her experiences camping on the shore of Weller Pond in 1931 in an attempt to cure herself of tuberculosis.

Reben grew up in New York City; when she was six her mother died of tuberculosis. When she, too, became ill she was sent to cure in Pennsylvania, the Catskills and finally, in 1927, to Saranac Lake. However, after curing at Trudeau Sanatorium for three and a half years, and after three operations failed to cure her, she decided to follow her own desires, and hired a guide to take her camping in the wilderness.

Reben spotted an ad for a different type of cure in the local newspaper. Local boat builder and guide Fred Rice placed an advertisement seeking a patient to help guide into the woods for the fresh air cure. Rice was a firm believer in the curative powers of the Adirondack woods. He argued that TB patients who were spending their days in the village of Saranac Lake resting on cure porches would be better served by getting out in the woods.

Fred Rice did not expect such a young and frail woman to answer his ad, but he and his wife Kate agreed that five months of steady work was worth taking. Together Reben and Rice traveled eleven miles to Weller Pond to camp.

Convinced of the health benefits of the outdoor life, Reben never returned to the city. Her disease slowly improved, and she lived to age 58.
Reben is pictured here with her pet duck, Mr. Dooley. To learn more about Reben’s time curing in the woods, and her writings, visit our wiki!
1 Comment

Women's History Month: Rosalind Russell

3/19/2019

1 Comment

 
Today's Women's History Month feature is Rosalind Russell! After graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1929, Russell had high hopes of becoming an actress. She heard that a Broadway producer on Long Island, Ed Casey, was casting for a summer theater in the Adirondacks. Casey had cured in Saranac Lake and believed the cosmopolitan town in the fresh air to be the perfect place for – as the program cover advertised – “A Bit of Broadway in the Mountains.” Russell opened the phone book and called Casey at home. Without a shred of acting experience, Russell got him to meet her. She charmed Mr. Casey, signing a contract on the spot for $150 a week.

And so in June of 1929, Russell, age 22, stepped off the train at the Union Depot in Saranac Lake. Casey’s partner, Dick Bartell, met her at the station and was dismayed to realize that Casey had hired for $150 a week the same inexperienced actress that he had spotted at her drama school and said he could get for $30 a week.

That summer, Russell earned every penny of her high salary, acting in 26 plays in 13 weeks. The theater was a tent behind the buildings on Main Street (where the Dorsey Street Lot is now), and the stage was made of birch bark. It was no easy enterprise. Owners Casey and Bartel acted in every performance, and local Saranac Lakers pitched in to help the theater.

Russell came back briefly the next summer of 1930 to open the tent theater for the summer, but then she moved on to join the Copley Players in Boston. Already, her career was taking off. In the 1930s she began working for MGM, making comedies such as Four’s a Crowd and dramas like The Citadel. In 1953, she returned to Broadway for the huge Tony Award-winning hit, Wonderful Town. She is well remembered for her title role in the long-running Broadway production of Auntie Mame.

Pictured here is Russell in 1956, and a program from the inaugural summer of her acting career from our collection. To learn more about Russell's time in Saranac Lake, and her career on and off the Broadway stage, visit our wiki!
Picture
Picture
Learn more about Rosalind Russell!
1 Comment

Women's History Month: Amy Jones

3/18/2019

1 Comment

 
For this Women's History Month Museum Monday, we want to share this pen and ink drawing from our collection. This image, titled "Adirondack Arrival," was created by Amy Jones. Jones was an accomplished artist who accompanied her ailing husband, David Blair Jones, who came 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. While living in Saranac Lake, she became one of the first artists to work for the Section of Fine Arts established by the United States Treasury Department as part of the New Deal. As a part of this project, she painted murals in post offices in Painted Post and Scotia, both in New York, and Winsted, Connecticut.

Throughout her career, Jones also contributed to magazines such as Women's Day, provided art work for advertising and illustrated books for World Publishing, Thomas Y. Crowell, and Random House. Although she moved to Mt. Kisco, New York in 1943, she maintained ties with the village. In 1946, she illustrated A Child’s Garden of Verse by Robert Louis Stevenson, another famous health seeker. In 1969, she returned to Saranac Lake to give a demonstration at the opening day of the village's annual Paint and Palette Festival.

"Adirondack Arrival" was created around 1940 as an illustration for an unpublished children's book by Louise Leser. The illustration depicts passengers arriving at Saranac Lake's Union Depot, and the caption underneath reads "Down the street came a dog team at full gallop." The drawing was donated to Historic Saranac Lake by her daughter Lucy Jones Berk in 1996.

To learn more about Jones' career, and see more of her work, click the button at right to visit our wiki!
Picture
Historic Saranac Lake Collection, TCR #327. Courtesy of Lucy Jones Berk.
Picture
Amy Jones at the 1st TB Reunion in Saranac Lake, 1987.
Learn more about Amy Jones!
1 Comment

Women's History Month: Josephine Smithwick

3/17/2019

1 Comment

 
Picture
Today we have a special St. Patrick's Day post for Women's History Month! We want to share the story of Josephine Smithwick, who was an Irish-American cure cottage operator here in Saranac Lake. She ran the Smithwick Cottage, built 1917, at 60 Park Avenue (now 109 Park Avenue). They had originally come to the area for her husband Michael's health in 1912, but he passed away in 1918. Smithwick operated the cure cottage until her death in 1948.

It is most likely that Smithwick is pictured at the upper right in this photograph of the "Smithwicks Gang," from an album of photographs kept by Verdo Newman in the 1920s.

To learn more about Smithwick and the Smithwick Cottage, visit our wiki.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!
1 Comment

Women's History Month: Olga Petrova

3/15/2019

1 Comment

 
Picture
It's Fan Friday, so we're answering a Women's History Month question from Katherine: "How did Petrova School get its name?"

Great question! Petrova school is named for Olga Petrova, who was a vaudeville actress, silent film star, and writer. Although her name sounds Russian, it was actually a stage name. She was born Muriel Harding in England. She adopted the stage name Olga Petrova for vaudeville performances in London and eventually moved to the US to star in silent films for Solax Studios. She was Metro Films' first "diva," and was often cast as the femme fatale.

Petrova came to Saranac Lake on several occasions at the height of her fame, at the request of theatrical agent William Morris. She and other stars of stage and screen would perform in Saranac Lake to raise funds and support tubercular patients.

Read More
1 Comment

Women's History Month: Christine Burdick

3/14/2019

1 Comment

 
It's both Women's History Month and Tuberculosis Thursday, so we're sharing the story of Christine Burdick today. Burdick was employed by the First Presbyterian Church of Saranac Lake from 1928 to 1933 as the "Parish Visitor"— she visited tubercular patients who were on bed rest in local sanatoria, cure cottages, and private homes, providing for the spiritual care of those living with tuberculosis. In 1928 alone, she made two thousand visits! At the church, she led the youth group and assisted with prayer services.

To learn more about Burdick's life and work, visit our wiki!

Picture
1 Comment
<<Previous
Forward>>

    About us

    Stay up to date on all the news and happenings from Historic Saranac Lake at the Saranac Laboratory Museum!

    Archives

    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019

    Categories

    All
    12 Days Of SL Mas
    Black History
    Collections
    Cure Porch On Wheels
    Events
    Exhibits
    Friday Link
    Grants
    History
    History Matters Column
    Image Of The Week
    Letters From The Porch
    Museum Monday
    Nurses
    Oral History
    School Programs
    Staff
    Talking Points
    TB Patients
    Trudeau Building
    Tuberculosis Thursday
    Visitors
    Wednesday Mini Tours
    Winter Carnival
    Women's History Month

    RSS Feed

Historic Saranac Lake at the Saranac Laboratory Museum
​89 Church Street, Suite 2, Saranac Lake, New York 12983
​(518) 891-4606 - mail@historicsaranaclake.org ​
Join our mailing list
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.
 Thanks to our business sponsors: 

Picture
Picture
Picture
​© 2021 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. ​
  • Visit
  • Events
  • About
    • Visit
    • Historic Saranac Lake
    • The Museum
    • Trudeau Building
    • 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