This wonderfully clear photograph of Saranac Lake in about 1885 was made by George Baldwin. Note that the old Harrietstown Town Hall, built in 1886, is not present. Also missing are the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium (only Little Red, built in 1884, existed), and the original Saranac Lake High School (1890) on Main Street. Broadway is a well-wooded lane, there is no sign of St. Bernard Street, or Park Avenue, and Helen Hill is bare. The railroad would arrive the following year. It is Saranac Lake on the cusp of explosive growth!

Saranac Lake, c. 1885, cropped from the photograph below

Saranac Lake, c. 1885, by George Baldwin. (from www.antiquephotographics.com)

1 Blood's Hotel, later the Riverside Inn
2 Spaulding Block
3 Seaver A. Miller Cottage
4 St. Nicholas Hotel (later the Empire Hotel)
5 35/37 Main Street, National Express Office, later Kendall's Grocery
6 43 Main Street, a grocery (now the Waterhole)?
7 Linwood Cottage
8
9
10 48 Main Street (Little Joe's)
11 Mrs. Lucius Evans Cottage ?
12 Frederick A. Isham
13 Berkeley House
14 The Academy for which Academy Street is named
15 Methodist Church
16 Guild House
17 Lawrason Brown Office and Residence (before Brown came to town)
18 Ensine Miller's house, Sunnyside, where the William Morris playground is today
19 The first Edward Livingston Trudeau house and office had just been built; it would burn (and be rebuilt) in 1894
20 St. Luke's Church
21 Future site of the Baldwin House
22 Charles M. Lea House
23 Helen Hill
24 Future site of the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium
25 Future site of Park Avenue
26 Adirondack Bottling Works
27 Pliny Miller's Sawmill and Gristmill
28 Future site of Harrietstown Town Hall
29 Fowler's Livery

The following Sanborn Maps of the village are dated 1895, about ten years later than the photograph. They are the earliest available. Note that today's Broadway was named Depot Street at the time, for the New York Central Depot located across the tracks from today's Kinney Drugs. The earliest Sanborn Map of Saranac Lake, Broadway and Bloomingdale Avenue, 1895 The earliest Sanborn Map of Saranac Lake, south Broadway, 1895

Note: The orientation of the following two maps does not match the ones above. North is approximately at top, above, to the right on the map immediately below, and as indicated on the last map. The earliest Sanborn Map of Saranac Lake, Main Street and Broadway, 1895 The earliest Sanborn Map of Saranac Lake's southern Main Street, 1895

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