70 Lake Street
Address: 147 Lake Street
Old Address: 70 Lake Street
Other names: Mrs. Conrad Ulmer (1920s), Bullock Cottage (1911), Weiner Cottage (1912), Kirsch Cottage (1928), Wilkins Cottage (1928); DIS. Hensle Cottage (1916)
Year built:
Other information:
Cure History
According to the 1916 TB Directory, the Hensle Cottage, run by a Mrs. Hensle had room for four patients, had one cure porch and charged $9-12 per week.
According to a 1925 Jubilee Book of American Legion Post 614, 70 Lake Street, called Ulmer Sanatorium, had a contract with the Veterans Administration for care of tubercular veterans after World War I. According to TB Society records, by October of 1922 it was not officially recognized under contract, but it was noted as, "Suitable for lower finance patients than the U. S. Vet. Bureau Contracts for O.K. on our B. H. Reg. for this class of house."
Sew-Vac Shop
This was the home in 1960 of Bob Sawyer who in 1960 became the sewing machine mechanic for the Saranac Footwear Corporation; he eventually opened a sewing machine and vacuum machine repair shop, the Sew Vac Shop, at this address.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, October 20, 2001
Local man keeps ‘em in stitches
All nature may abhor a vacuum, but Bob Sawyer sure doesn’t.
Nor would you expect him to, since vacuums have been very good to him. And so have sewing machines.
Yes, as the brains, and hands of the Sew-Vac Shop, vacuum cleaners and sewing machines (especially broken ones) have been his bread and butter.
So how, you might ask, does one become a vacuum cleaner and sewing machine repairman? Although the road wasn’t rocky, it was long and had its fair share of detours.
It all started in 1960 with the shoe factory, which was in the building that is now occupied by Furniture Weekend. The factory’s mechanic, Harold Clark, was about to retire, and looking around, he spied Sawyer.
Sawyer was always mechanically inclined, though with typical modesty he downplays his aptitudes.
“I always puttered,” he said, “but it’s like my mother used to say — I was great for tearing things apart … I just couldn’t put them back together.” Keeping his mother’s assessment to himself, Sawyer showed up for his first lesson.
“OK,” said Clark, pointing at one of the sewing machines, “show me what you know.”
“Well,” said Sawyer, “I know that the wheel goes ‘round and ‘round, and the needle goes up and down.”
“All right,” said Clark, “now I know where to start with you.”
And start they did, with on-the-job training which lasted a couple of months, until Sawyer took over as the factory’s sole mechanic.
Sawyer readily recalls his biggest source of trouble with the factory’s machines — it was sabotage.
The operators would want a break, so they’d somehow foul up the machine. Then they’d call for Sawyer.
The process was always the same. “So what’s the problem?” Sawyer would say.
“Gotta be you,” the woman would say, “I’ve been sewing for 15 years.” Then Sawyer would have to check the machine till he could find out what exactly had been fouled up. This got the women their breaks but it also got Sawyer’s goat. He decided to put an end to both these things.
So every night after supper he’d go back to the factory and study the machines completely. He did this several hours a night for a few weeks, going over every operation, one at a time, of every machine, until finally he knew the machines better than the operators did.
Then, the next time he heard, “Bob, this machine’s acting up,” he was able to troubleshoot and fix it, at almost the same time.
The operator’s reaction was always the same, “What was wrong with it?”
And Sawyer’s reaction was the same as well, “Nothing. It was you.”
Then he’d show them exactly what they’d done to the machine.
This got him new respect among the operators. And it wasn’t long after that the operators started approaching him, saying “Bob, my machine at home’s been acting up. Can you take a look at it?”
And so Sawyer got into personal sewing machine repairs. This was only a side job, though, since he had his shoe factory job. The shoe factory closed and became a dress factory; Sawyer worked there as well.
Then in the early ’60’s, the dress factory closed, and Sawyer worked for the village. Later he drove a school bus. And somewhere in between, he took over Ray McCasland’s upholstery business.
But upholstery is a sporadic business, directly related to upswings and declines in the economy. Sewing machine and vacuum cleaner repair, however, is a steady business, so in 1979 Sew-Vac was born.
Why the name Sew-Vac? Originally, Sawyer was going to call the business Sewing World, till his friend Ernie Schmidt dissuaded him in a flash.
“Everywhere you go,” said Schmidt, “it’s ‘this’ world and ‘that’ world.”
So Sew-Vac it was.
How difficult is it to repair vacuum cleaners and sewing machines? With the cleaners, 85 percent of the malfunctions are one of five things — a bad chord or switch, a broken wire, or brushes or motors that are shot. The other 15 percent is a plugged hose.
As for sewing machines, it depends. The simpler the machine, the easier it is to find its problem. But the more functions a machine can perform, the more complex its mechanism is, the more things to go wrong and the harder it is to find out the problem.
Not that the extra effort is ever passed on to the Sew-Vac customers.
“I only start charging them once I find the problem,” says Sawyer. “Otherwise, people couldn’t afford it.”
Was there ever a machine that stumped Sawyer? One still stands out in his memory.
It was a German machine called a Pfaff with a very complicated internal drive. The owner’s husband tried to replace a belt, had no idea what he was doing and so the machine was kaput.
Without benefit of a manual or schematic of any kind, Sawyer labored over it for almost six months. Finally he got it working for all but two stitches: when one worked, the other didn’t, and vice versa.
He conceded defeat, told the woman to send it back to the factory. He also asked her to request a reply from the factory, telling what exactly was wrong with the machine.
A while later a letter came to Sawyer from Pfaff’s head technician. He explained the minor adjustment Sawyer hadn’t been able to figure out.
And while Sawyer had felt he’d failed by not having figured out how to repair the machine perfectly, the head technician was astounded anyone could have figured out as much as Sawyer did, working completely on his own. He closed his letter saying, “If you ever want a job with Pfaff, you’ve got one.”
“I always took that as a great compliment,” said Sawyer.
Sawyer also had no problem recalling his oddest sewing machine repair.
A woman brought in a machine that was smashed almost beyond recognition. It turned out her little boy had taken a hammer to it. Sawyer told her restoring the machine would cost twice as much as a new one, but she told him to go ahead and do it.
He did, and about six months later, the woman returned with the same machine, again hammered mercilessly by the same boy. But this time, Sawyer bowed out.
“I can’t take your money,” Sawyer said. “You’ve got to take the machine somewhere else.”
And to himself he recalls thinking, “And while you’re at it, put the kid in leg irons.”
And so 40 years after he first decided to give sewing machine repair a try, Sawyer’s still at it.
And although he’s the only person in the North Country qualified to do industrial machine repair, his business is almost exclusively personal machines.
The Sew-Vac Shop, which is at 70 Lake St., is open for business from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday, and 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Fridays. Sawyer himself usually comes down after dinner to work for an hour or so, but the shop’s closed then.
Asked if he ever gets bored, Sawyer said, “No. I enjoy doing it, plus I like people.”
“Besides,” he added, “I need something to keep me occupied in my retirement.”