In the not too distant future, Historic Saranac Lake Executive Director Amy Catania said these now-empty rooms will be filled with plenty of interesting items and stories, but people won’t have to go searching for them.

HSL bought this building at the corner of Main and Church streets in 2019 with plans to convert it into a museum, an extension of its museum next door at Trudeau’s laboratory. HSL hosted an open house to give visitors a sneak peek before construction begins.

“We haven’t done much with the place yet,” Catania said. “But I think it’s exciting for people to see the ‘before.'”

Some visitors on Wednesday were excited even by just the bones of the house.

Eric, back, and Michelle Helgeson look through the window Edward Livingston Trudeau would climb out to sit on his first cure porch at his 128-year old home in Saranac Lake. Historic Saranac Lake has purchased the home with plans to convert it into museum space and opened it to the public this week before construction begins. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

They opened cupboards, peered into closets and admired porcelain doorknobs like house-hunters inspecting a home for sale. They were seeing what information they could glean about the people who used to live there.

Catania said the house isn’t just a vessel for the museum’s exhibits. It is an artifact itself.

Michelle and Eric Helgeson were feeling the texture of the intricate patterns in the glass on one of the back-room doors. They once owned a house built in 1920 with similar glass, but said it’s rare to find glass like that used in construction anymore.

The Helgesons moved to Saranac Lake from Texas two weeks ago and were glad they got to see the house on Wednesday.

“We love this museum,” Michelle said. “We’ve been coming up the last two years during the summers and we spend a lot of time with the museum people.”

People mill about and talk inside Edward Livingston Trudeau’s 128-year old home on the corner of Church and Main streets in Saranac Lake on Wednesday. Historic Saranac Lake has purchased the home with plans to convert it into museum space and opened it to the public this week before construction begins. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

They said they love how HSL is methodical in their work to preserve history. Even the radiators in the upper rooms are interesting, the couple said, painted gold with decorative swirls and flowers etched on them. The appliances were built with beauty in mind.

“They don’t make them like that anymore,” Michelle said.

Previously, the new building had been medical offices, and before that, the home of the Trudeau family while the famous doctor conducted his research on tuberculosis, research that put Saranac Lake on the map.

Andy Rawdon, a HSL board member who grew up in Saranac Lake and lives in Potsdam now, came to assist with the open house. He said when he was young, it seemed everyone in town was a tuberculosis patient or cured from the disease.

He said he remembers as a child, he and all his friends were always a bit afraid of “Mrs. Trudeau” — Helen Garretson, who was married to Francis, Edward’s son. They’d always see her sitting in a rocking chair at a second-floor window facing Main Street and their 5-year-old imaginations ran wild.

The house has been stitched together over the years. The original siding has been covered up, rooms have been modernized and there have been several expansions.

Visitors could literally see through the years to the history behind walls and ceilings where holes in modern drywall or missing ceiling tiles reveled centuries-old architecture.

Catania said their goal is to restore the house to close to its original image.

The total estimated cost for the project, from purchase of the building, to construction and setting-up of exhibits, is $5.2 million. HSL has raised $3.7 million so far.

Catania said HSL will close on the construction bids at the end of this month and work can start then. The public likely won’t be back in until the work is done, she said.