Highland Park Historic District

Highland Park is a quiet residential enclave of large private houses along Park Avenue and Old Military Road at the northeast edge of Saranac Lake. Its 22 contributing resources, built between 1896 and 1930, sit on broad lots set back at least forty feet from the street, with views across the Saranac River valley to the mountains. The land was once a hop farm and was developed from 1898 by Dr. Ezra McClellan, whose deed restrictions required residential use only, minimum construction costs and generous setbacks, excluding commercial cure cottages. Nearly all the houses sheltered people with tuberculosis and include cure features such as glazed second-story sleeping porches, extra-wide doorways and call bells. Local architects, including William L. Coulter and William G. Distin, worked in Shingle, Tudor Revival, Colonial Revival, Dutch Colonial and Mediterranean Revival styles. Residents included Dr. Lawrason Brown, author Thomas B. Aldrich and several wealthy families. The district is valued as an intact collection of single-family cure cottage architecture.