Born:
Died:
Aletta Werle was the proprietor and namesake of the Werle Cottages; she operated the two cottages at 110 and 112 Main Street with her business partner, Jane Schneidawind [also Schneiderwind]. She was known throughout the village for her delicious meals and "picnic baskets."
Excerpt from Saranac by Robert Taylor, 1986. pg. 198.
"The opening of Sunmount and the onset of the Great Depression affected Saranac's cure cottages; nevertheless, on a comparative basis they prospered. Consider 110 and 112 Main Street, the Werle Cottages owned by Aletta Werle and Jane Schneiderwind. Miss Werle's forte--and a compelling talent it proved--was cookery; Miss Schneiderwind was her business partner. The cottages fulfilled separate functions: 112 Main, a "nursing" cottage in which patients were confined to their beds or cure chairs (the dumbwaiter survives as a testament that many patients were "on trays"); 110 Main, an "ambulatory" or "up" cottage where patients indulged in mild exercise (coping, in the village vernacular, with "dandruff." a mild dusting of TB). Like the aristocracy of the ill, the Trudeau patients, who had a limousine-taxi that brought them six at a time into the village, the boarders at one-ten enjoyed activities like shopping or going to the movies. They ate at one-twelve, however, where Miss Werle produced wondrous picnic baskets for those unable to reach the dining room. The baskets, famous in the village, were also distribute to "nursing" cottages or establishments without dining facilities."
