60 Franklin Avenue
Address: 26 Franklin Avenue
Old Address: 60 Franklin Avenue
Other names: Judson Newman Smith Cottage
Year built: 1897
Architect: William L. Coulter
Other information: On July 1, 1897, Judson Newman Smith and William L. Coulter made the first of the contracts in the architect's file, for a residence at Saranac Lake at a price of $4,837.15. It was one of the earliest of the fine winter residences for T.B. patients in the village. Judson Newman Smith was a young man, a sometime writer for outdoor magazines, and a tuberculosis patient who died shortly after building the house.
In its verticality and steep roofline, the design of the Smith house is clearly related to the Administration Building at the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium, on which Coulter worked for the firm of Renwick, Aspinwall and Renwick. In this first of the houses that Coulter designed under his own name, he uses a simple variation on the use of stucco as infill for half-timbering, since stucco and the artisans to apply it were probably not yet available in the mountains. The Smith house is one of the few fine houses in its neighborhood which has not been subdivided or had major alterations. However, many original features were destroyed in a fire in 1974.
In the 1980s and 1990s this was the home of the Victor Willette family.
Sources:
- "Historic Resources of North Elba" survey, 9/30/1991.
- W. L. Coulter contract, July 1, 1897.
- Deeds at the Essex County Clerk's office.
- Comments