Adirondack Park Motors sold Buicks and Sinclair gas and oil products. A bowling alley occupied the second floor front. Part of the building was destroyed by fire in the 1940s. Adirondack Daily Enterprise, August 29, 2009 Address: 138 Church Street and 39 Woodruff Street
Old Address: 22 Church Street Extension and 24/28 Woodruff Street
Other names: Adirondack Park Motors, G. O. Automotive, Nori's, Stratton Plumbing and Heating, Nori's
Year built:
Other information: This building fronts on both Church Street and Woodruff Street, where its old address was 28 Woodruff Street, and its new address is 39 Woodruff Street, the former location of Stratton Plumbing and Heating.
December 11, 1958, saw Boyce and Roberson's substantial Tudor Revival-style building on the northeast corner of Church and Woodruff streets go up in flames. The fire moved incredibly fast, engulfing the upper floor in five minutes; drums of fluid in the ground-floor service station began to explode. According to Jim Griebsch, his sister, Nancy, was attending Dorothy Sargeant's dance class in the cavernous second floor space, formerly a bowling alley, when the fire began. When Nancy didn't return promptly to the family home on Helen Hill, a frightened Marion Griebsch sent Nancy's big brother Jim to find her. Brother John, 14, had gone down from his paper route with his constant accessory, his camera, shortly after the alarm. This was an exciting photo opportunity, as he had just started taking pictures a year or two before. John found Nancy almost immediately, and she stayed with him and safely watched the fire from Church Street hill. John took some stunning photos that evening and sold them to the Enterprise. In those days before cell phones, Nancy earned a loving scolding from her mother for not checking in at home! The first floor of the building still stands, housing Stratton Plumbing and Heating and G.O. Automotive, a one-story shadow of its architecturally handsome former self.
From "Saranac Lake in the 1950s," Adirondack Daily Enterprise, January and February, 2007.
