On Saturday, HSL held a construction completion celebration at the 161-year-old building’s back and front porches with a large crowd of supporters.

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Hope

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The August 2023 groundbreaking of Historic Saranac Lake’s museum at Edward Livingston Trudeau’s former home and office. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

HSL Executive Director Amy Catania said a “thread of hope” ran through the building’s history.

Catania said Trudeau was ever the optimist. His first public lecture was titled “The Role of Optimism in Medicine” — and was probably written on the front porch of the building.

While he didn’t have all the answers, but he offered hope, and he accomplished a lot in the face of misfortune. When he was confronted with monumental tasks like acquiring the funding to build a sanitarium in the middle of nowhere, he persevered. Through his connections, diligence and belief in the project, he got it built.

Catania said it took a similar effort to restore his former home to its historic appearance and to turn it into a museum.

HSL bought the property in 2019, right before the coronavirus pandemic upended construction and drove building costs up. The project faced an uphill battle. Catania had dozens of people to thank who contributed time, money and energy for this.

Historic Saranac Lake Executive Director Amy Catania speaks from the back porch of Edward Livingston Trudeau’s former home and office, which HSL restored to turn into a museum. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

State Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, said every time he sees HSL staff, they’re “firing on all cylinders.”

Assemblyman Billy Jones, D-Chateaugay Lake, said not a week goes by where Catania is not emailing him about the project.

“Amy, I will tell you, she is dogged,” Jones said.

She is very happy with the final product.

“It still takes my breath away when I go past it,” Catania said.

She’s driving her husband crazy telling him to turn down Church or Main streets so they can pass it every time they drive through town.

Previously, the 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.

Catania called the intersection where the building stands “the epicenter of hope.” It was sort of the birthplace of the future of Saranac Lake.

Trudeau was the village’s first mayor, first doctor and helped fund the building of its first church — St. Luke’s across the street. Next door, at the laboratory, scientists searched for a cure to tuberculosis, which, at the time, killed one in seven people.

Catania said the corner can be a place of hope again, with the improvements to the building.

The building had become an “eyesore” and was not close to its historic look. The powder blue vinyl siding was faded, the exterior was in disrepair, flotsam filled the floors of rooms and hallways and the historic walls and trim of the rooms had been covered with modern drywall, cupboards and florescent lighting.

The work crews removed anything that was added after 1915 and kept anything that was there during Trudeau’s lifetime, while he was using the building — from its construction in 1894 to around 1915.

The house isn’t just a vessel for the museum’s exhibits. It is an artifact itself, with unique wallpapers, doorbells, windows and cure porches.

Three generations of Trudeaus, as well as countless other doctors and nurses, cared for the community from that building for 125 years. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Catania was most excited about restoring the original dark red wood clapboards, instead of the powder blue vinyl siding.

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The building’s future and past

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The lead contractors, Bishop Beaudry Construction, first broke ground in August 2023. Catania said they worked in the dust and in the cold to restore the building.

With the building’s completion, HSL’s work starts — finalizing the exhibits to fill the building with. HSL is currently raising money to open new exhibits, expected around this time next year.

Catania said they are going out to bid soon for fabricators for interactive, digital and informative exhibits. The museum collection has been expanding under staff Chessie Monks-Kelly and Emily Banach.

The first floor will start with an introduction to the Trudeau family and the building — explaining the space. The rest of the floor will focus on the broader story of the region’s past — logging, hunting, guiding, farming, hotels and Indigenous history.

Catania said David Fadden, who runs the Six Nations Indian Museum in Onchiota, helped tell the long-erased history of Indigenous people in the Saranac Lake area. While the HSL exhibit will not be as comprehensive as his museum, she said it will be an introduction to the history.

Upstairs, exhibits will focus on tuberculosis patients and the people who cared for them.

The building is dedicated in memory of Mary “Polly” Rousmaniere Gordon, who came to Saranac Lake in 1940 for the cure, regained her health and returned to New York City in 1943 where she lived until 1980.

Her children have supported HSL for a long time and were the first donors when the museum bought the building. Gordon’s sons, John and Dan, who were born after she returned to the city, told Catania they would not be on this Earth if it was not for the treatment in Saranac Lake giving their mother her life back.

Trudeau’s first home was built in 1884 but destroyed in a fire in 1894. His new home and office was built in the same year.

The home and office was built in the Colonial Revival style with the brick laboratory — now HSL’s headquarters — next door. Trudeau died in 1915.

Two more generations of his family practiced medicine there. The medical offices in the building were the oldest continuously operating medical facility in the Adirondacks until it closed in 2017.

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Funding

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The museum has spent $6.2 million on the project thus far, and is still raising funds for exhibits to fill the space with.

The project was funded through $1.9 million in nine state grants, $25,000 in three local government grants, $768,415 in six federal grants, $3.4 million from private donors and foundation grants and $1.4 million in tax credit financing.

HSL is starting its “Three Pillars” campaign, seeking to raise $3.75 million for the three pillars of exhibits, accessibility and longevity. The campaign has raised $1.1 million so far — $742,000 raised for exhibits with $508,000 more needed, $335,000 raised for accessibility with $1,165,000 more needed and $23,000 in new endowment funds raised with $977,000 more needed to last into the future. Catania said HSL has $430,000 in its endowment now.

Daniel Mackay, the deputy commissioner for historic preservation from the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation said he’s been to many ribbon cuttings, but it was a treat to be at HSL’s. He said they have a great “density of historic resources” here.

He was also glad to see the National Parks Service’s Paul Bruhn grant program getting used on the project. Bruhn was his mentor and Mackay said he knew his friend was smiling down on them.

But he also said the future of federal funding for projects like this one is uncertain.

“The federal funding sources that made this project possible are in peril,” Mackay said. “The funding for several of these programs has not been released in the current federal fiscal year.”

These program spending lines have been zeroed out in next year’s budget, including $1.7 million that underwrites the office he works in.

Catania said they are still searching for grants to fund the exhibits. But with federal grants appearing to dry up, and the state preparing to potentially have a budget crisis trying to respond to Medicaid and food assistance cuts, museum grants are getting more competitive because there’s less money to go around.

This is not be the first time there’s been a museum in the house. When the construction started, HSL found photos in the Saranac Lake Free Library’s collection showing a museum space in the second floor dedicated to Trudeau after he died in 1915.