At the turn of the century, before drug therapy replaced older regimens, the village of Saranac Lake was known as the “Town of Second Choice.” That second choice was given to people with tuberculosis when it was discovered that the Adirondack air, purified by pines and other conifers whose aroma it was thought destroyed organic matter, and which was also notably dry, when combined with institutional rest offered a cure to what at that time was considered an incurable disease. Indeed, as Saranac Lake’s reputation as a place where many “hopeless” cases found their disease arrested, a large sanatoria industry took place and grew. (In 1920 there were over 150 cure cottages run exclusively for the sick. These cottages cared for the 2,000 patients who were in the village.)
In 1922 a fateful decision for the future of Saranac Lake was made by some doctors, who were the most powerful men in the village. William Chapman White, in his regional study called Adirondack Country, put it this way: “The Veterans Administration proposed building a 500-bed hospital just outside of the village. For various reasons, some logical and many fearful, the influential doctors prevailed on the Veterans Administration to build that sanatorium elsewhere. It was built eighteen miles down the road at Tupper Lake, where Sunmount Hospital has been an important factor in the economic life of that town. For that decision many of the townspeople never forgave the doctors, no matter how well-reasoned their arguments.”
Thus the opening of Sunmount and the depression of 1929 started a downward trend in the future of the cure-cottage industry in Saranac Lake. Up until that time, of course, a high percentage of those thousands of patients who came to Saranac Lake got well and saw their disease arrested. A number of those people stayed on as residents, many of them famous and wealthy, and Saranac Lake became a “cosmopolitan center in miniature.” Readers of this column who are old enough may well remember that there was a certain “snooty” feeling by some Saranac Lake residents toward the French-Canadian lumberjack town of Tupper Lake in those days. To its credit, by virtue of its various and many accomplishments, Tupper Lake finally escaped that ill-founded attitude, but not before it persisted for a number of years.
That having been noted, point out that many patients stayed only long enough to get well and moved on. Among those patients was an individual named Myron Newman, also known as Meyer or Myer Neuman. Newman or Neuman, who was from New York City, left Saranac Lake in 1902 and migrated to this village. He had lived here for four years when he bought a rambling three-story hotel on Park Street, which had been built in 1890 and was called at that time The Globe. It was later owned by Barney Seigel (Seigel Hardware) at which time the name was changed to Alta Cliff Cottage. (This was apparently a very fancy name designed to attract customers. In reality, it was a run-down hotel. The top story was later removed and it was converted into, and has since served as, a two-apartment building. Having escaped the 1899 fire, which destroyed so much of downtown, it must be one of the oldest buildings in the village.)
If you drive past the former Alta Cliff Cottage today, the road goes sharply up to the Rock Ridge development. In earlier times an access road contoured left around that “RockRidge” and led to a quarry owned by the Town of Altamont. (In 1916 the quarry was given gratis to the O.W.D., which mined it for two years during construction of their plant here.)
Mr. Neuman and his “hotel,” like so many others, would most likely have faded into obscurity if it were not for a fateful and tragic turn of events.
It began on a rainy July day when Neuman and his waitress, Clara Greenwood, returning from a shopping trip in the village discovered a young couple sitting on the hotel veranda.
The young man was well groomed, slightly handsome, and well spoken. He introduced himself as Charles George and wife and asked for a room.
He explained that they had just arrived on the six o’clock train from New York and had taken a stagecoach driven by Dan MacDonald from the Jct. Station.
Myron Neuman was reluctant, even suspicious, but when the young man claimed (this was a lie) that he had written ahead for accommodations, Neuman finally agreed to take the couple in for the night. That night turned out to be the last night the attractive young “wife” would spend on this earth. Her real name was Grace Brown, pregnant and unmarried, who thought she was on a wedding trip. Her “husband” was not Charles George but Chester Gillette, the preppy, social-climbing nephew of the owner of a shirt factory in Cortland, New York, where he had met Grace when both worked there. Chester Gillette was planning murder, not matrimony, when they visited this community. A murder that would horrify and fascinate millions of people (even today) and would become Upstate New York’s most famous murder case. It would later become the basis for Theodore Dresiser’s classic novel, “An American Tragedy” as well as the movie “A Place in the Sun” with Montgomery Cliff and Elizabeth Taylor.
Meyer Neuman, his waitress Clara Greenwood, and Daniel J. MacDonald, the local livery owner, would become star witnesses in the murder trial held in Herkimer, New York. The national press would carry sixteen-page supplements that contained their testimony, and Tupper Lake and the Alta Cliff Cottage soon became famous. A fame that might well have led to the kidnapping and the disappearance (despite ransom paid) of Meyer Neuman later in his life. We will follow that testimony given in the Herkimer County Courthouse as it relates to this village in our next column.