Address:
Old Address: 155 Pine Street
Other names: Morrell Cottage (1911), Schroch Cottage (1911), Carpenter Cottage (1912), Lee Cottage (1928), Reed Cottage (1929); DIS
Year built:
Architect:
A recent count reveals that there were over 700 cure cottages in Saranac Lake. At least two of these were operated by Black families and catered to Black patients.
John Ramsey and Mattie Reid, brother and sister, opened a cottage at 26 Lake Flower Avenue (later the site of an Exxon station) not long before 1920. They sold that house a few years later and both married.
Mattie and her husband, Claude Reid, then bought a house at 155 Pine St. and converted it to meet the needs of a curing clientele. They added bedrooms and built a kitchen at the rear of the building. A house need not be bristling with porches to have been a cure cottage. When the Reids bought it, 155 Pine St. hadn't even a single cure porch, and the Reids did not change that. Instead, they enclosed a fairly large, L-shaped veranda. This provided a suitable facility for patients to take the air.
In summer, when weather permitted, those who felt well enough would sit out on the lawn. On one occasion, an entire Black baseball team stopped to visit a patient at Reids' — quite an event for sleepy, outer Pine Street.
Both Ramseys' and Reids' remained cure cottages until around 1950, when the sanatorium industry in Saranac Lake collapsed.
Original text by Philip L. Gallos
Comments
2011-02-17 12:53:20 Interesting that Hunter Haynes's wife was Alice Reid. Do you think she and Hattie Ramsey's husband were related? —MaryHotaling