Discover 20 hidden attractions, cool sights, and unusual things to do in Saranac Lake (United States). Don't miss out on these must-see attractions: Dewey Mountain, Will Rogers Memorial Hospital, and Adirondack Daily Enterprise. Also, be sure to include Wildlife Conservation Society Adirondack Program in your itinerary.
Below, you can find the list of the most amazing places you should visit in Saranac Lake (New York).
Table of Contents
Dewey Mountain
Mountain in New York State. There is another Dewey Mountain in Chittenden County, Vermont
Dewey Mountain is a 2,090-foot-tall (640 m) mountain in Franklin County, New York just south of the village of Saranac Lake. A hill that slopes down to Lake Flower and is a shoulder of Dewey Mountain has been called Blood Hill, Maple Hill, or sometimes Reservoir Hill. It is one of three small mountains surrounding Saranac Lake: the others are Baker Mountain and Mount Pisgah. It was originally called Ring Hill. Kiwassa Lake Road runs along the eastern side of the hill and of a shoulder of Dewey Mountain. The Dewey Mountain Recreation Center operates a ski center on the west side of the mountain. In the 1920s weekly ski meets were held consisting of ski jumping followed by a cross-country race—early Nordic combined. Competitors would come from around New England, New York City and Montreal. One of the jumps was on Blood Hill, an eastern shoulder of Dewey. In the 1940s there was a downhill ski area on the west side of the mountain served by a rope tow.[1]
Will Rogers Memorial Hospital
Hospital in Saranac Lake, New York. Will Rogers Memorial Hospital is a historic tuberculosis sanatorium located at Saranac Lake in Essex County, New York. It was built in 1928 as the National Vaudeville lodge by the National Vaudeville Artists Association, who previously sent patients to the Kennedy Cottage. It is a three-story, "T" shaped, steel frame and reinforced concrete structure above a raised basement. It is faced in stucco and decorative half-timber framing in the Tudor Revival style. It features asymmetrical massing, a three-story polygonal tower with a hexagonal roof, and three story pavilions with recessed sleeping porches. It was named in honor of entertainer Will Rogers in 1936 and provided unconventional tubercular treatment to entertainment industry patients from 1936 to 1975. It also was open as a night club but when casinos were voted down in New York, it was closed. Then it was open as an apartment house. It stood abandoned for years slowly deteriorating. It was briefly used as press headquarters for the 1980 Winter Olympics. Finally it was bought and after a huge renovation was done both to the outside and inside, it currently houses an independent living facility known as Saranac Village at Will Rogers.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.[2]
Adirondack Daily Enterprise
Art gallery, Shopping, Museum, Bridge
Address: 52 Main St, 12983-1738 Saranac Lake
Wildlife Conservation Society Adirondack Program
Theme park, Bridge
Address: 132 Bloomingdale Ave, Saranac Lake
Helen Hill Historic District
Historical landmark in Saranac Lake, New York. Helen Hill Historic District is a national historic district located at Saranac Lake, Essex County and Franklin County, New York. It encompasses 77 contributing buildings and 38 contributing structures in a predominantly residential section of Saranac Lake. It developed between about 1856 and 1954, and includes notable examples of Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, and Bungalow / American Craftsman style architecture. The district is characterized by many cottages retaining the "cure porches" that distinguished the area's early days as a sanitarium. Located in the district are the separately listed Bogie Cottage, Coulter Cottage, Fallon Cottage Annex, Hill Cottage, Hooey Cottage, Kennedy Cottage, Lent Cottage, Marvin Cottage, and Noyes Cottage. Other notable buildings include the Cure Cottage Museum and Mary Prescott Reception Hospital.
It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.[3]
Hillside Lodge
Hillside Lodge is a historic cure cottage located at Saranac Lake in the town of Harrietstown, Franklin County, New York. It was built about 1920 and is a single-family, one-story dwelling clad in cedar shingles and surmounted by a standing-seam hipped roof. It has a two-story turret with solarium and a fieldstone chimney. It features two cure porches and has Colonial Revival and Queen Anne style details.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[4]
Leis Cottage
Cottage in Saranac Lake, New York. Leis Cottage, also known as Camp Leisure, is a historic cure cottage located at Saranac Lake in the town of Harrietstown, Franklin County, New York. It was built in 1904 and is a 2+1⁄2-story, L-shaped wood-frame structure with a gable roof and projecting cross-gable in the Queen Anne style. It has a large verandah and second story sleeping porch. It features a cobblestone chimney and porte cochere. Henry Leis, who operated a piano and music store, also owned the Leis Block.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[5]
Ryan Cottage
Historical landmark in Saranac Lake, New York. Ryan Cottage is a historic cure cottage located at Saranac Lake in the town of Harrietstown in Franklin County, New York, USA. It was built in 1893 and is a 1+1⁄2-story, wood-frame dwelling with clapboard siding on a fieldstone foundation in the Queen Anne style. It has a central hipped roof obscured by multiple gables and gable dormers. It features a wraparound verandah.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[6]
Smith Cottage
Smith Cottage is a historic cure cottage located at Saranac Lake in the town of Harrietstown, Franklin County, New York. It was built about 1903 and is a small 2+1⁄2-story, wood-frame dwelling sided in clapboard and shingles and covered by a cross-gable roof in the Queen Anne style. It features an open sitting-out porch under a second story overhang bordered by a round tower.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[7]
Stonaker Cottage
Stonaker Cottage is a historic cure cottage located at Saranac Lake in the town of Harrietstown, Franklin County, New York. It was built in 1916 for the personal use of Edwin and Jeanne Stonaker. It is a one-story, wood-frame dwelling sided in shingles and covered by a shallow pitched asphalt roof with deep overhanging eaves. It features a large central octagonal cure porch with quartz windows, flanked by two smaller hexagonal bays.
It was sold in 1932, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[8]
Freer Cottage
Cottage in Saranac Lake, New York. Freer Cottage is a historic cure cottage located at Saranac Lake, Franklin County, New York. It was built about 1920 and modified in 1926–1928. It is a 1+1⁄2-story, wood-frame dwelling with a gambrel roof and 2-story addition in the Colonial Revival style. It features two cure porches. Also on the property is a contributing former garage.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[9]
Knollwood Club
Knollwood Club is an Adirondack Great Camp on Shingle Bay, Lower Saranac Lake, near the village of Saranac Lake, New York, USA. It was built in 1899–1900 by William L. Coulter, who had previously created a major addition to Alfred G. Vanderbilt's Sagamore Camp. The "club" consisted of a boathouse, "casino", and six identical 2+1⁄2-story shingle cottages, which were distinguished by unique twig work facades.
The camp was built for six friends: Elias Asiel (Asiel & Co.), George Blumenthal (Lazard Freres), Max Nathan, Abram M. Stein, Daniel Guggenheim (American Smelting and Refining), and Louis Marshall (noted constitutional lawyer and framer of the "Forever Wild" clause in the NYS constitution). The choice of Lower Saranac Lake as the site was determined in part by the growing anti-Semitism in America in that period. In 1877, Joseph Seligman was involved in the most publicized anti-Semitic incident in American history up to that point, being denied entry into the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York, despite having been a regular guest previously. William West Durant owned much of the land bordering the Saranac Lakes, and was more than willing to sell to any and all buyers. As a result, many of the Great Camps and cottages on the Saranac Lakes were built by wealthy Jewish people.
Bob Marshall, the wilderness activist, and brothers George Marshall, the conservationist, James Marshall (author and co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council) and their sister Ruth Marshall Billikopf spent the summers of their youth there, and were greatly influenced by the surroundings.
Albert Einstein was a frequent summer visitor; he was at Knollwood on August 6, 1945, when he heard on the radio that the atom bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, and it was at Knollwood that he gave his first interview after the event, on August 11.[10]
Denny Cottage
Building in Saranac Lake, New York. Denny Cottage is a historic cure cottage located at Saranac Lake, town of St. Armand in Essex County, New York. It was built about 1910 and is an "L" shaped frame building on a fieldstone foundation, with a cobblestone chimney and gable roof. It features an "L" shaped screened in porch with its roof supported by Roman Doric order columns.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[11]
Ames Cottage
Ames Cottage is a historic cure cottage located at Saranac Lake in the town of Harrietstown, Franklin County, New York. It was built in 1906 and is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure in an asymmetrical cruciform plan. It has four gables off a central hipped roof, deep boxed overhanging eaves, and exposed rafter ends in the Queen Anne style.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[12]
Dr. Henry Leetch House
Heritage building in Saranac Lake, New York. Dr. Henry Leetch House is a historic cure cottage located at Saranac Lake, town of North Elba in Essex County, New York. It was built between 1931 and 1932 and is a two-story, wood-frame structure on a fieldstone foundation with a gable roof in the Tudor Revival style. It features cure porch built over the garage and another at the rear of the house. It was designed by noted local architect William L. Distin for Dr. Henry Leetch, who specialized in treating tuberculosis, and who had the disease himself.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[13]
Cure Cottages of Saranac Lake
Between 1873 and 1945, Saranac Lake, New York, became a world-renowned center for the treatment of tuberculosis, using a treatment that involved exposing patients to as much fresh air as possible under conditions of complete bed-rest. In the process, a specific building type, the "cure cottage", developed, built by residents seeking to capitalize on the town's fame, by physicians, and often by the patients themselves. Many of these structures are extant, and their historic value has been recognized by listing on The National Register of Historic Places.[14]
Chester Valentine House
Chester Valentine House, also known as Strathmore Cottage, is a historic Strathmore model Sears kit house located at Saranac Lake, Franklin County, New York. It was built in 1932, and is a one-story, L-shaped plan dwelling in the Tudor Revival style. It features a gabled entrance, diamond-pane casement windows, and a prominent brick and stone chimney.
It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.[15]
Leis Block
Leis Block is a historic commercial building located at Saranac Lake in the town of Harrietstown, Franklin County, New York. It was built in 1902 and is a three-story wood-frame structure. Renovations between 1910 and 1914 that added the current brick front, resulted in four full apartments, each containing a central inset sleeping porch. The storefronts once were occupied by Henry Leis's piano and music store and Earl Finegan's pharmacy. Henry Leis, who owned the block until his death in 1940, also built the Leis Cottage. The current structure has ten apartments and two storefronts. The pharmacy at one time was named Terminal Pharmacy because it was the bus stop. Later it was renamed Hoffman Pharmacy.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[16]
Dr. A. H. Allen Cottage
Dr. A. H. Allen Cottage is a historic cure cottage located at Saranac Lake in Franklin County, New York. It was built in 1909 and is a two-story wood-frame structure clad in cedar shingles. It is a rectangular structure with a gabled roof, large shed roof dormer on the north end of the house, and non intersecting gables on the south end on both sides. It features a verandah and sleeping porch.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[17]
Drury Cottage
Drury Cottage is a historic cure cottage located at Saranac Lake in the town of Harrietstown, Franklin County, New York. It was built in 1910 and is a 2+1⁄2-story, frame dwelling set atop a cut stone foundation and surmounted by a gable roof clad in asphalt shingles. The front facade is dominated by a 2-story, three-bay cobblestone porch.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[18]