Berkeley Square Historic District (Additional Documentation)

Saranac Lake's historic business center runs along Main Street and Broadway, where they meet at the "Y" long known as Berkeley Square. The district holds twenty-six buildings dating from 1867 to 1932, mostly three-story commercial blocks with attached or closely spaced fronts. Milo Miller's French Second Empire buildings, the oldest in the district, established business use of the street in the 1860s and 70s. After Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau settled in the village in 1876 and later founded a sanitarium, the tuberculosis cure industry drove commercial growth. Several blocks, including the Donaldson, Haase, Fowler and Roberts buildings, were built with recessed galleries and balconies so patients could rent rooms and take the fresh air cure. At the southern end, the Beaux-Arts Harrietstown Town Hall, completed in 1928 after its predecessor burned, has a domed clock tower, limestone trim and a marble staircase. Together the buildings form an urban streetscape that contrasts with the wooded Adirondack setting.