The village

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1890 postcard showing view from Signal Hill looking toward village

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The view down Mirror Lake, ca. 1890

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Another view down Mirror Lake, ca. 1890

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Boating on Mirror Lake, ca. 1900

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A small group of business buildings that once stood at the intersection of Main Street and Mirror Lake Drive at the base of Saranac Avenue,

shot around 1920. The lot is now a small village park.

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The same small complex, from the lake. The first of these buildings, on the right, was built between 1898 and 1909. In 1920, that building housed

a beauty supply shop, Maison de Venus. A small produce shop, the Tampa Fruit Co., was opened in 1919 in the building on the left end.

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Upper village, at turn off Main Street onto Saranac Avenue, 1903

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Main Street coach, 1900

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Lake Placid Transfer Company coach, 1907

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Old Town Clock Livery (current address 2541 Main Street). In 1903, the Devlin Block of shops and apartments was built on this site.

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Paving Main Street with brick, 1921

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Building Hillcrest Avenue

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Ready to pave with brick, 1921

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Main Street … paved!

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Although street paving was completed in 1921, that didn’t mean snow didn’t still muck up the streets of Lake Placid. (Photo dated 1926)

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Early snow roller

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Brownell shooting gallery, 1895 [later, Kaiser Photo]

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The top of Main Street, 1901 — Brownell & Kaiser Photo on right

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Henry Kaiser’s photo shop, ca. 1903

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Henry Kaiser and Mrs. W.W. Brownell

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Main Street boardwalk; Lake Placid Public Library in background

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Lake Placid Public Library, 1903

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Program for the Happy Hour Theater, built in 1911 [current street address, 2523 Main Street] — expanded in the 1920s — now The Wanda, an apartment building

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First North Elba Town Hall, 1910; built 1908

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Theater in old Town Hall, 1910

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Old Town Hall after fire, Feb. 11, 1915

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Lake Placid Military Band posing in front of the new Town Hall

Newman

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The dam and sawmill on Mill Pond, 1885, which drove the development of what many thought of as a separate village to the south of Lake Placid — Newman.

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Horatio Hinckley, builder of the house (in the early 1840s) later occupied by Anna Newman (1875) at Heaven Hill.

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Anna Newman’s house at Heaven Hill, 1885

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Anna Newman

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G.G. White general store, corner of Station Street and Mill Hill road, 1886

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Opera House, corner of Station Street, bottom of Mill Hill, 1900

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Left, blacksmith shop (later, an IGA grocery store, now closed); right, Raeoil Building (now Downhill Grill), bottom of Mill Hill, ca. 1900

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George Chellis house, next to Lamb Lumber, ca. 1900

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Cummings boarding house, later W. Wells building, top of Mill Hill

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Mill Pond, 1900

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Mill Hill, 1905 (note electric lines). Large building is Weston, Bull & Mihill, above the Raeoil Building

Placid Lake

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View of Paradox Bay from Mount Whitney

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Yacht Club

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Boating at Undercliff, 1895

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Up the lake, 1903

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The Carry (from Placid to Mirror lake), 1903

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Sailboat, 1903

The Doris

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The Stevens House hotel atop Signal Hill had a large and well-stocked boathouse on Placid Lake’s Paradox Bay. Of distinct advantage to them was the busy little fleet of

pleasure boats owned and operated by a third brother, Henry Stevens, whose Ida, Nereid and grand old Doris plied the lake waters to the delight of tourists.

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The launching of the Doris from the Stevens House boathouse in 1898.

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The Doris cruising on Placid Lake, ca. 1900.

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The crew of the Doris, ca. 1912.

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The Doris, ca. 1910.

Early churches

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“Father” Cyrus Comstock, a Congregationalist circuit rider who served North Elba’s First Colony, along with every other settlement in early Essex County. He came to the Adirondacks in 1810, settling in Lewis. He is reputedly the inventor of the Comstock wagon. He died in 1853 and is buried in the Lewis cemetery.

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Worship services were held in various places in early North Elba — Osgood’s Inn, the Little Red School — until 1875, when the Union

Church was built. It was familiarly known as the White Church.

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Another shot of the Old White Church, then located on the corner of Church Street and Old Military Road.

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After the Baptist (1882) and Methodist Episcopal (1888) churches built their own worship houses in the developing village of Lake Placid, the White

Church building was used by various congregations until shortly after 1915.

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The Lake Placid Grange, which formed in 1908, bought the White Church building in 1929. After the Grange dissolved, the building stood empty for years. It was

bought in 1988 by Trinity Chapel, an independent congregation, and moved to its present site, directly behind the Jewish cemetery on Old Military Road.

284

The Adirondack Baptist Church was built in 1882. Its site is next to the municipal parking lot, directly across Main Street from the former Bank of Lake Placid (now an NBT Bank branch). It was torn down in the 1950s to make way for a

new Nazarene church, which was abandoned in the early 2000s.

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Another shot of the Baptist church, from behind, looking out over Mirror Lake. The building was torn down about 1953.

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Rev. Otis Dike, pastor of the Baptist church from 1898 to 1918, standing on the steps of the church. The Baptist parsonage, built in 1888 next door to and behind the church (to the north), later became the parsonage of a Nazarene church built in 1956. The Nazarene parsonage was sold along with the

church in 2005 to the Adirondack Museum; the parsonage was demolished in 2006.

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The first Methodist Episcopal church building was a wooden frame structure that was dedicated on Aug. 23, 1888.

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Another shot of the Methodist church building, taken around 1900. The old wooden building was sold and moved to School Street on Nov. 2, 1923, to

make way for the construction of the current building, built of stone. At this writing (in 2008), the old building serves as a sports bar called “Wise Guys.”

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In front of the old Methodist church after Sunday services, ca. 1914.

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The tree outside the old Methodist church building was decorated with lights at Christmastime. “The Methodist tree” stood there for many years, until it started dying and had to be removed in 2005.

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Lake Placid’s first Catholic church, St. Agnes, was built in 1896. The current address of that location is 2487 Main Street. The building was desanctified in 1905 when the second St. Agnes was opened on Saranac Avenue at the church’s current location. The steeple was

removed from the former sanctuary on Main Street in 1906 after it became a hardware store.

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St. Eustace-by-the-Lakes Episcopal Church, ca.1901. The building, completed in the early spring of 1900, stood on Placid Lake; the location is now the lower lawn of George and Ruth Hart’s Signal Hill home. The building was later dismantled and rebuilt on Main Street. The new building was dedicated on June 19, 1927.

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The Episcopal Parish House, built in 1901. Its current address is 2515 Main Street. The Parish House served as a community center

for the new village, not just for Episcopalians but for everyone.

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Interior, Episcopal Parish Hall

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Camp Irondequoit (“Where the Waves Breathe and Die”), built on the East Lake around 1900 by the Rev. W.W. Moir, the Episcopal minister also responsible for building the Parish House. Camp Irondequoit provided spiritual and physical recreation for boys. (Photo W.F. Cheesman)

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St. Hubert’s Episcopal Church, Sentinel Road, Newman. Designed by architect William G. Distin, it was built in 1902. It was sold to the Pilgrim Holiness congregation in 1927.

The building burned on Feb. 10, 1954, but was rebuilt upon similar design features.

Schools

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Christmas card showing Little Red Schoolhouse at the Newman Road site

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Lake Placid Union School class picture, June 14, 1899

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Lake Placid “wooden high school,” ca. 1915

Roads

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Cascade Road stagecoach, 1870

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Mrs. MacKenzie identified this as a 19th century photo of the Cascade Road. Ed Palen, however, believes that it shows the road coming out of Elizabethtown, about half-way

toward Keene. Palen says, “The peak on the right is called Pitch-off, as is the more famous Pitch-off in Cascade Pass. That must be where the confusion came from.”

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Wilmington Road, winter

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Wilmington Road, 1903

John Brown

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The headstone of John Brown’s grandfather, a Revolutionary War veteran, was brought to North Elba by his grandson. “Our” John Brown’s death, however, and that of his son Oliver, are recorded

on the lower part of the grandfather’s stone. Today, this marker is enclosed in a glass housing.

312

Two portraits of Gerrit Smith, the benefactor of North Elba’s black colony. John Brown first came to North Elba in 1849 to help this colony of free-born African-American tradesmen,

almost all of them born in the state of New York, as they tried their hands at farming.

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North Elba’s Thompson family became closely tied to that of John Brown, both by marriage and by their mutual hatred of slavery. This is a photo of Dauphin Thompson, killed at age 21 on John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry.

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Henry Thompson, John Brown’s son-in-law, was wounded in the Kansas “Free State” skirmishes, but he did not participate in the Harper’s Ferry raid. Henry built John Brown’s house for his family, which stands today at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site.

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William Thompson was slaughtered by a mob after being taken captive at Harper’s Ferry.

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Labeled “Isabell and Watson Brown,” this photo shows Belle Thompson Brown, widow of John Brown’s son Watson, and her son, Frederick W. Brown, better known as Freddy. Freddy died of diphtheria at the age of 4 and is buried in the North Elba Cemetery.

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John Brown’s house in North Elba, ca. 1880.

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Two more photos taken around 1880.

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In this 1899 photo at the Brown cemetery, 12 more of the men killed in the Harper’s Ferry raid are being reburied alongside their leader.

Moving pictures

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Set for “Out of the Snows.” In February 1920, the Selznick Company shot “Out of the Snows” on Lake Placid in the lee of Pulpit Rock, with Whiteface as a backdrop.

In this dramatic framework, the ship “Pole Star” lies marooned in “Arctic” ice.

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After the burning of the “Pole Star” in “Out of the Snows.”

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On the set of “Janice Meredith,” by far the most legendary film made at Placid. A famous Revolutionary War tale, it starred the delectable Marion Davies, close companion of William

Randolph Hearst, and was produced by Cosmopolitan to the tune of a million dollars.

Farming

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Farm on Adirondack Lodge Road, 1878

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Buck and Star, members of an ox team

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Bennett farm, Cascade Road, 1880

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Old Ware farm

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Farm on Old Military Road opposite North Elba Cemetery

Lake Placid Club

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Albert Billings’ farmhouse on the east side of Mirror Lake, built in the 1870s, was sold to John Fraser in the later 1880s. Fraser operated it as a boardinghouse, which he called “Bonnieblink,” visible on the far side of the lake, at center, in this 1890 photograph.

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In 1895, Melvil Dewey leased Bonnieblink for the summer as part of his new Placid Park Club. The following February, he bought

Bonnieblink. Following expansions, it became the Lakeside clubhouse.

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Melvil Dewey, creator of the Lake Placid Club

340

A hand-tinted postcard, 1905

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The Lake Placid Club boathouse

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The Iroquois Council Fire, an annual end-of-summer LPC ritual, was held each Labor Day weekend.

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The Lake Placid Club’s “Morningside” campus, on the eastern shore of Mirror Lake, ca. 1905.

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The Lake Placid Club’s Mohawk clubhouse, located on the south side of the Wilmington Road. Built around 1850 by Roswell Thompson, it was acquired in the

late 1890s by the Isham family, who operated it as the Placid Heights Inn. The building was purchased by the Club in January 1906, and was immediately enlarged.

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Circa 1906.

346

The LPC’s Stanley Steamer at the Lake Placid Club Chicken Farm.

Placid at war

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World War I draftees

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WWI Welcome Home parade, July 4, 1919

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More WWI Welcome Home festivities, July 4, 1919

352

New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, second from left, front, visits Lake Placid during the Army occupation, 1944; also in photo are Willis Wells, Deo Colburn, Mayor Luke Perkins

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New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, center, and Luke Perkins, riding shotgun

Miscellaneous personages

357

Polly and Thomas Brewster, parents of Benjamin Brewster, one of the two original settlers of the village of Lake Placid. They are buried in the North Elba Cemetery.

358

In 1850, John Thompson was elected as the first supervisor of the new North Elba township.

359

Jerod Taylor Rosman, better known as Jed, seated on the steps of the Adirondak Loj. Rosman became very well-known in North Elba during his reign as head guide at the Loj from 1920 to 1936. His specialty was Mount Marcy and Indian Pass. As a conservationist, Rosman took great pride in reforestation projects around Heart Lake.

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Calvin Coolidge visiting Saranac Lake, 1926

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George Stevens, younger brother and partner of John Stevens, proprietors of the Stevens House. George Stevens was also the founding president of the Bank of Lake Placid.

Miscellaneous

365

“Camping in the Adirondacks,” 1870

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Lake Placid guides, late 19th century

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1906 three-panel postcard: St. Agnes Catholic Church (No. 2), the Doris, and the Lake Placid Inn

368

Fred Fortune’s camp at the end of Bear Cub Road was once a speakeasy called “The Bear Cub.” It’s not certain whether the road was named for the watering hole, or vice versa.

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Unidentified child, 1890s

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Staff of the (Lake Placid) Mountain Mirror, predecessor of the Lake Placid News. The first issue was published Dec. 8, 1893, but the paper didn’t last for much longer than a year.

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Polo team, late 1920s