Carl Stearns
Carl Stearns is a preservation architect, based in Syracuse, who has worked on many projects in the Saranac Lake region and elsewhere in the Adirondacks.
The following memoir was Carl Stearn's addendum to a report on a site visit to Harriman Cottage at Paul Smith's College, June 1, 2005:
Stearns is an Adirondack enthusiast because "as far back as he can remember" summer meant Paul Smith's, starting in 1948 and running for several years. His father, Professor Donald E. Stearns, P.E., Dean of Civil Engineering at Syracuse University at that time, ran a summer surveying camp for S. U. students at the fledgling Paul Smith's College, starting when Mr. Frederic E. Leasure was president. The Stearns, Antoni and Quinn families would move in for the summer while the fathers all taught surveying. The academic schedule must have been rigorous as it started daily at 7 AM , ended at 9 PM, included Saturdays, and in fact included a full day of work on July 4, 1948 so as to not lose program time. For the children, things were different. Old Carley rafts stacked next to the old abandoned electric railroad car provided the floats for swimming and Lower St. Regis lake and Mountain Pond some of the better fishing. The Old Store with its porte cochere, slamming screen door, and oily wooden floors provided groceries to barefooted boys and girls who were sent over by their mothers from the cottages along the shores of Lower St. Regis. The quonset huts, tan surveying uniforms and army surplus jeeps were reminders of the recent World War. The Stearns family spent the first summer in Baker, the second beyond the stone tower (the subject of at least one of Merrill Bailey's watercolors paintings of Paul Smith's College) in one of a pair of cottages next door to the Bailey family and the third in Kellogg House on the point across from the sawmill which had the big chimney and the old horse-drawn carriages stored beneath. Imagine the delight of discovering the stagecoach in storage behind an old house, the prospect of going to Saranac Lake on a school bus to buy flour by the bag, the evenings spent in the Rockefeller Estate watching the white tail deer or at Lake Clear Junction watching DC-3s land, and the smell of oil paintings on display at the bowling alley at nearby White Pine Camp. Mountains were climbed, St. Regis, Baker and Ampersand, and blueberries were picked. The sidewalk along the lakefront at the "Harriman Cottages" was a boardwalk, substantial enough so that a Mr. Sidebotham drove his jeep on it. Smith Cottage provided college offices, including Dr. Buxton's, while he and his family lived in Glover Cottage. The Bluebird Cottages and those beyond the stone tower are long gone. But, the "Cottages of the Paul Smith's Hotel" are the twentieth-century heritage of the Paul Smith's community and of Paul Smith's College.