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Saranac Lake is a village located in the state of New York, United States. As of the 2000 census, the population was 5,041. The village is named after Upper, Middle, and Lower Saranac Lakes, which are nearby.
The Village of Saranac Lake covers parts of three towns (Harrietstown, St. Armand, and North Elba) and two counties, Franklin and Essex. The village boundaries do not touch the shores of any of the three Saranac Lakes; Lower Saranac Lake is a half mile west of the village. The northern reaches of Lake Flower, which is part of the Saranac River, lie within the village. The town of Saranac is an entirely separate entity, 33 miles to the northeast.
The village lies within the boundaries of the Adirondack Park, about seven miles from Lake Placid. These two villages, along with nearby Tupper Lake, comprise what is known as the Tri-Lakes region.
Saranac Lake was named the best small town in New York State and ranked 11th in the United States in The 100 Best Small Towns in America.[1] In 1998 the National Civic League named Saranac Lake an All-America City and in 2006 the village was named as one of the "Dozen Distinctive Destinations" by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. [1]. The village has 186 buildings that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
History The area was first settled in 1819 by the Jacob Smith Moody family, from Keene, New Hampshire. Later settlers Pliny Miller and Alric Bushnell established a logging facility with a dam and sawmill in 1827, forming the basis for the village. The first school was built in 1838, and in 1849, William F. Martin built one of the first hotels in the Adirondacks— the "Saranac Lake House", known simply as "Martin's"— on the southeast shore of Lower Saranac Lake. Martin's would soon become a favorite place for hunters, woodsmen, and socialites to meet and interact.
In 1876 Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau arrived to treat his own tuberculosis; in 1884 he founded his first sanitarium, called "Little Red", for treatment of this disease, in which two patients were placed. Little Red, the first "cure cottage", was built on a small patch of land on the backside of Mount Pisgah which Trudeau had purchased. As more and more patients visited the region, including author Robert Louis Stevenson in 1887, Trudeau's fame grew. Soon, the sanitarium had grown such that it was entitled to its own post office, which would sort and deliver mail to its many patients. The Trudeau Institute, an independent medical research center, evolved from the sanitarium. In 1964, the Trudeau Institute began researching the functions of the immune system and how it guards against many infectious diseases, including tuberculosis.
Telephone service was introduced in 1884, and the Chateaugay Railroad reached Saranac Lake from Plattsburgh in 1887.
The village was incorporated on June 16, 1892, and Dr. Trudeau was elected the first village president soon thereafter. Electricity was introduced on September 20, 1894, by installing water wheels on the former site of Pliny Miller's mill. Paul Smith, an important figure in the history of the village, purchased the Saranac Lake Electricity Co. in 1907, forming the Paul Smith's Electric Light and Power and Railroad Company, which eventually became part of Niagara-Mohawk. At the same time, the village began to stabilize, with public schools, fire and police departments,and other municipal facilities forming.
Starting in the 1890s and for the next 60 years, "Saranac Lake was the Western Hemisphere's foremost center for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis." (Gallos) An effective antibiotic was first used on human TB patients in 1921, but only after World War II did it begin to be widely used in the US. Thereafter, sanatorium treatment began to lose its importance, being phased out completely by 1954, when the sanatorium's last patient, Larry Doyle, left. Among the last of the prominent patients that sought treatment for Tuberculosis was Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon who died in Saranac Lake on August 1, 1944.
But the village's preeminence in TB care had lasting consequences beyond the many large, handsome private cure cottages that were left vacant after the patients were gone. The effect of the hundreds of patients and doctors from all over the world who came to live in the village, many of them prominent in business, literature, science or another field, many of whom stayed for years, cannot be underestimated. Combined with the area's popularity with the power elite, who built their Great Camps on the nearby Saranac and Saint Regis Lakes, the effect was to change the sleepy village of 300 of the 1880s into a vibrant "little city" of 8,000, as the village referred to itself for many years.
Saranac Lake became an especially busy town in the 1920s, with the construction of the Hotel Saranac and several new, permanent buildings after multiple fires destroyed a large part of downtown. Bootlegging was common in the village. During the 20s, entertainer Al Jolson and president Calvin Coolidge were semi-frequent visitors to the village— Jolson once performed a solo for three hours at the Pontiac Theater on Broadway Avenue.
Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina, the first Filipino president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, died in Saranac Lake of tuberculosis, August 1, 1944. In 1954, Saranac Lake hosted the world premiere of the Biblical epic film The Silver Chalice, Paul Newman's film debut. Several of the stars, including Virginia Mayo visited the the village and participated in the winter carnival parade.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) vacationed in the village, and Albert Einstein had a summer home in Saranac Lake and could often be seen sailboating.
In recent years, Saranac Lake has become a more conventional tourist destination. The Hotel Saranac, until 2007 operated as a laboratory for hotel and restaurant management students of Paul Smith's College (now privately held), is a memorable early 20th century Deco structure. The former sanatorium is now the corporate call center for the American Management Association.
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