Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau’s house at 118 Main St., Saranac Lake, is seen around 1900. (Photo provided by the Saranac Lake Free Library)

When the fire bell rang it was almost 4 a.m. on a cold November night in 1893. Some villagers in Saranac Lake were already peering anxiously from windows, awakened by the initial sound of an explosion. And what they saw was flames, already engulfing the home of Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau, at the corner of Main and Church streets.

Fortunately, Dr. and Mrs. Trudeau were in New York City and unharmed. However, the loss was significant. Their belongings were gone, and only the chimney stack remained of their home. Perhaps worse, Dr. Trudeau’s home laboratory was a heap of ash and hot cinders. Indeed, it was a kerosene lamp, rigged to control incubator heat, which had exploded.

Friends gathered quickly to help. George Cooper, a former patient, pledged funds to build a new and better laboratory. This one would be fireproof and well away from the home. J. Lawrence Aspinwall, a prominent architect and Dr. Trudeau’s cousin, set about designing both the laboratory and new residence on the same corner property. Dr. William Osler wrote to express his condolences: “take my word for it, there is nothing like a fire to make a man do the Phoenix trick.”

Dr. Osler was correct. Within a year, an imposing stone laboratory was ready for Dr. Trudeau and his colleagues to resume their search for a cure of the “deadly white plague.” Adjacent to the laboratory arose a new two-story residence in the fashionable Colonial Revival style, It would become the home for two generations of the Trudeau family and the medical offices of three generations of doctors Trudeau.

From the outset, the house was much more than a family home. Dr. Trudeau’s son, Dr. Francis B. Trudeau, remembered his mother knitting in the living room while he studied his school books, both of them listening to the doctors who gathered nightly to share research papers and debate their laboratory findings. Many days the porches and even the lawn were filled with patients hoping for a consultation.

Soon the house began to expand, growing to meet these needs. A wing was added for the doctors’ offices, and cure porches were added for Dr. Trudeau’s own treatment. After E.L. Trudeau’s son Francis died in 1956, his widow Helen took up residence on the second floor and lived there until her death in 1982.

When E.L. Trudeau’s grandson Frank retired in 1985, the building passed to the Medical Associates that continued the practice until the end of 2017. Dr. Richard Handler, one of Dr. Frank Trudeau’s partners, proclaimed the building as “the oldest continuous medical facility within the Blue Line.”

Historic Saranac Lake has signed a contract to purchase the property at the end of this year. The building will be restored to its former glory and reopened as a museum complementing HSL’s existing exhibits at the neighboring Saranac Laboratory. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, 118 Main St. will continue to serve — as it has for almost 125 years — as a gathering place for all those who treasure Saranac Lake’s heritage.

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Elaine Sunde lives in Saranac Lake and is a board member of Historic Saranac Lake.