Ramsey Cottage
Address: 245 Lake Flower Avenue
Old Address: 24-26 Lake Flower Avenue
Year built:
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 and Hattie Ramsey, brother and sister, opened a cottage at 26 Lake Flower Avenue (present site of an Exxon station) not long before 1920. They sold that house a few years later and both married.
John Ramsey and his wife, Viola, established Number 24 as a private sanatorium. And very private it was. It was not advertised, and few casual observers would have realized that in the house behind the honey locust hedge was a cure cottage to which citizens of the West Indies, staff members of wealthy households, and knowledgeable working-class people had come to regain their health.
Viola Ramsey ran the cottage and did the cooking. John Ramsey, well-liked and still spoken of by many as "quite a guy" and "a very fine man," worked for George L. Starks for 50 years and one week. He was Mr. Starks' chauffeur; he drove delivery for Starks Hardware; and according to all sources, he "did just about everything else" as well.
Both Ramseys' and Reids' remained cure cottages until around 1950, when the sanatorium industry in Saranac Lake collapsed. The Ramseys then continued business at 24 Lake Flower Ave. by running it as a boarding house/tourist home primarily for members of domestic staffs of wealthy families. On Thursday evenings there was always a buffet to which came chauffeurs and butlers, maids and cooks, and other employees from most of the great camps of the region.
Eventually, John and Viola and their two adopted daughters, Joyce and Betty, moved to New York City but continued to come to Saranac Lake on vacations. John Ramsey died here, in the late 1950's.
Original text by Philip L. Gallos
Comments
2010-02-19 21:34:47 It is possible that Mr. Hunter C. Haynes cured here. Mr. Haynes was an African American inventor, entrepreneur, manufacturer, and motion picture director. He was living in Chicago in 1900. His obituary in the Chicago Defender in 1918 makes reference to him passing away in Saranac at 28 Lake Flower (perhaps it really was 24 Lake Flower, as no record seems to exist of 28 Lake Flower?) J. Fred Olive III, EdD, Associate Librarian, Mervyn H. Sterne Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham ([email protected]) is researching Mr. Haynes and seeks information on Mr. Haynes. —amycatania
2010-03-31 A Report of a Case of Tuberculosis for Haynes, states his address is 26 Lake Flower Street, from at least 10/27/1916 until 4/23/1917 according to his attending physicians. His previous address before coming to Saranac Lake was 143 W 136th Street, NY, NY. —Fred Olive
