154-156 Broadway, E&M Market at right
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, November 15, 1926 Address: 155 Broadway
Old Address: 154-156 Broadway
Other names: Parks Cottage, C.W. Park (1898-1933)
Year built: c. 1903 (1902 W.H. Jackson photograph, 1903 Sanborn map)
Other information: On Sanborn maps from 1903 to 1916 the address is marked "furniture."
In 1974, 156 Broadway was the home of Lee's TV and Wesmar Furniture Exchange.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, June 19, 1986
Tenants escape apartment fire
By MERI-JO BORZILERI
SARANAC LAKE — A flash fire ripped through an apartment building in downtown Saranac Lake late this morning, leaving six tenants homeless and sending clouds of dark smoke billowing over the village.
The fire, at 156 Broadway, caused major damage to the three-story structure, and residents of the building felt lucky to escape with their lives.
They were also lucky that new smoke alarms were reportedly installed in the building this morning, hours before flames started.
Fire departments from Lake Placid and Paul Smiths-Gabriels were assisting the Saranac Lake Fire Departament.
Twenty-nine-year old Charlene Banker, who lived on the second floor in the back of the large red building, barely had time to call the fire department, wake up her two napping children and carry them downstairs and outside.
"We've lost everything," said a sobbing Banker, who was comforted by her husband Joseph.
Banker whisked her children, Amy, 6, and Scott, 4, out of the burning building via an outside staircase when she saw flames coming from a porch outside her second story window.
Banker's other son, Joey, 9, was attending school at the time. "What am I going to tell him?" said the trembling mother.
Albert Bruso, 18, was sleeping in his brother Kevin's apartment on the third floor when he awoke to find he was trapped by the flames.
"I woke up and noticed the fire engine outside," said Bruso. "I looked around, but saw no fire (outside). Then I looked above me and saw smoke coming through the ceiling and black smoke rolling out of the door."
Bruso said he felt the door, which was hot, and decided not to open it. He then began to get panicky when he saw flames outside the window.
"I took a blanket and wrapped it around me and ran downstairs," said Bruso. "I tried to keep as low as I could" but the smoke was pretty thick, he said. Coughing and stumbling, he made his way out of the building.
Mary Reilly, who lived above the Bankers in the back of the building on the third floor, said the fire started and spread quickly.
"From the time I heard the crackling of the flames to the time I got out, it was about two minutes," she said. She was able to salvage a crate of record albums, but she fears one of her two cats may be lost.
Banker is almost certain her two pet hamsters and a kitten are dead from the fire.
"The smoke was so thick in there," she said.
The building is owned by William Decker, who owns several apartment buildings in town. The Decker family suffered another loss from fire early this winter when the Big D building supply business was gutted by a blaze.
The Broadway apartment building was being renovated when the fire started.
Decker said his first reaction to hearing of the fire was to make sure no one was caught in the building.
Other residents of the building reportedly include Mary Webb and her daughter Gidget, Kevin Walker, Erica Muse and Elias Hassler.
The cause of the fire has not been determined.
