Dr. and Mrs. E.L. Trudeau and the 1915 graduating class of the D. Ogden Mills Training School for Nurses in front of the Inslee Cottage at the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium. Adirondack Daily Enterprise, September 15, 2007 
Courtesy of Noreen Oslander Trudeau Sanatorium Historic District, Reference Number 8
Inslee Cottage and patients, c. 1910
Courtesy of the Adirondack ExperienceYear built: 1897
Postcard showing the north face of Inslee Cottage, and three women can be seen sitting out on the porch. Postmarked January 29, 1929, Trudeau, NY. The message on the back reads, "Tuesday morning. This is a picture of the cottage where I am now. It's so nice to have Anne here. I'm getting on well now and am growing too fat for my clothes. This is a cold morning. Hope you are well. Love, Bess.
Historic Saranac Lake collection, #2021.3.13. Gift of the Florence Wright Tuberculosis Postcard Collection.
Inslee Cottage (?) c. 1920s. Courtesy of Lynn Newman.Description: Inslee is a one-story frame octagonal cottage of 1,510 square feet. Built into a hillside, the cottage sits on a rough stone boulder foundation that provides for almost two full exposed stories on the downhill side. The cottage is sided in clapboard and surmounted by a steeply pitched asphalt shingled roof. The roof is interrupted by a stone chimney and features a shed-roofed dormer. The cottage originally featured an open veranda, enclosed in clapboard after 1957. No information is available on the architect or builder of Inslee because the donor arranged for the entire design and construction, providing the completed building, not just the funds. This was a common procedure in the early period of the sanatorium. A comparison of historic and present-day photos is necessary to appreciate the fresh-air features of Inslee Cottage in its original state.
History: Inslee is one of the four-patient cottages on the same plan as the early McAlpin Cottage, which has been torn down. Of these, "the Inslee Cottage was the first cottage to be provided with hot water heat and a bathroom." 1 Dr. Trudeau wrote about the cottage's namesake: "It was in 1894 that I first met Mr. Samuel Inslee at Paul Smith's, when he consulted me for a trifling illness. He was a successful business man, with a big heart, ready to help all about him." 2 Samuel Inslee donated the original little wooden laundry building in 1894, and paid for the engineering of the water-works and fire protection in 1895. Dr. Trudeau wrote that in 1896, "Mr. Inslee died suddenly of pneumonia and the Sanitarium lost a good friend." 3
Source:
- Mary B. Hotaling, Draft nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, January 1993.
- National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
See also: Trudeau Sanatorium Historic District
Comments
Footnotes
1. Elizabeth Cole, page 36.
2. Trudeau, Autobiography, 263.
3. Trudeau, Autobiography, 265.
