Patients on the porch of the Endicott-Johnson Cottage. Note the sign, left, and the 71 Bloomingdale Avenue cottage on the right. (Historic Saranac Lake Collection.)
Address: 132 Bloomingdale Avenue, now a large yard with a low stone wall on the corner of Bloomingdale Avenue and Pine Street
Old Address: 1 Pine Street or 3 Pine Street; also, perhaps, numbered 73 Bloomingdale Avenue
Other names: Coval Cottage (1911), Fountain Cottage (1911), Karmany Cottage (1911), Markloff Cottage (1928), Endicott-Johnson Cottage (1930), Margaret Gutshaw (1949)
Year built:
Other information: Said to have burned down sometime after 1932 (apparently after 1949?)
Other information: This cottage is shown in a brochure published by the Endicott-Johnson Company, who benevolently provided for their tuberculous employees there, as well as in other cottages in the village.
Patients:
"In 1928 Endicott Johnson sent Glenna Shoemaker, wife of an employee, Fred Shoemaker, who worked on a leather-splitting machine in their calfskin tannery in Endicott, N.Y. Thought to contract TB from the animal hides. He probably passed it on to her. In 1932 their son William Shoemaker, age 15, stayed at corner of Pine Street and Bloomingdale. Endicott Johnson bought it. Burned down." HSL notes from July 1, 1986
"Marie Shay cured in an Endicott Johnson Cottage in 1934. She sent personal notes to HSL in 1993 referring to this building." Sharon O'Brien's notes from HSL file.
On February 3, 2008, Lowell Brigham wrote the following email to HSL:
I was probably around 5 years old when I visited my father in Saranac Lake for Christmas in 1938 or 1939. My memory is that my mother said that he lived in the Pine Street Cottage. I have a few interesting memories of our visit. One was my interest in my father and his friends sleeping outdoors on cold winter nights. I did not understand why they did not freeze. Another memory was how close all of the patients and nurses became during the time patients were in Saranac Lake. I believe my father was there over two years and I can remember him talking about some of his friends and some of the nurses many years later.
I remember looking out of the cottage windows and marveling at all of the snow that lay in the yard. I can remember that on Christmas, there was a celebration and even I got a present - it was a little pot and it is still around the house somewhere.
I remember parts of the railroad trip. One strong memory was passing by a small lake along side the railroad track and seeing people skating on the little lake. I was thrilled because I had never seen skaters before.
What is truly important about Saranac Lake is that it gave hope to huge numbers of people. While the cure rate may not have been as high as everyone would have desired, there were some cures. My father and many others were so very fortunate to work at Endicott Johnson. So many EJ workers owed their lives to fact that the company paid for their stay in Saranac Lake and for their care at the Wilson Memorial Hospital. My father had many surgeries as Doctor Williams continued to cut away ribs and diseased tissue. Some how, my father eventually beat the disease even though less than half of his lung tissue remained. He lived long enough to see me graduate from high school, Broome Technical Community College, get married, spend two years in the Army and then graduate from Michigan State with a degree in Electrical Engineering. I believe that he worked to stay alive as long as he could to watch me grow up. He died shortly after I graduated from the University.
For his entire life, he had a fond spot in his memories for Saranac Lake and I inherited some of this fondness. My wife and I managed to visit Saranac Lake during the early 1960's. It is a delightful place and we had a very good time. We even visited the location of the Pine Street cottage and a couple other cottages that had been identified as ones supported by EJs.
I cannot say enough good things about EJ and the way they treated their employees. We even lived in an EJ home and until my mother went back to work at EJs they allowed us to live in our home without paying a cent of interest or principal. My mother eventually, through lots of scrimping, paid for our home.
See also: Endicott-Johnson Cottages
Comments
2010-02-09 20:26:41 This is the same as 1 Pine Street, and needs a redirect. —MaryHotaling
