Village Improvement Society

In 1907, the Village Improvement Society was formed with the goal of improving the infrastructure of the village. Founding members included Marie Haase and Mary R. Prescott. In 1910, they contracted with the firm of Frederick Law Olmstead to study the village and draw up the first of Saranac Lake's "master plans". Emphasis was given to parks, especially the development of parks along the river corridor.

The V.I.S. continues this work today, with half of the village's ten parks under its direct ownership and care and with advisory status for the rest; it is still working toward completely green river banks.

Parks include:

• Riverside Park, on the site of the old Riverside Inn
  

• Prescott Park, on Lake Flower near Pontiac Bay
  

• Triangle Park or Triangle Herb Garden, at the corner of Pine Street and Main Street, near the Saranac River
  

• Beaver Park, on the Saranac River corner of Dorsey Street and LaPan Highway
  

• Denny Park, on the river corner of Bloomingdale Avenue and Pine Street
  

• Dorsey Street Park, on the Saranac River, from Dorsey Street to lower Main Street parking lot.
  

• Sunset Park Adirondack Arboretum, bounded by Olive Street, Sunset Road and Hope Street
  

• Vest Pocket Park, Main Street beside the Saranac Lake Free Library
  

• Prospect Corner, a small triangular garden, at the junction of Prospect Avenue and Virginia Street
  

• Veterans' Triangle, at the intersection of Church Street and River Street
  

• Baldwin Park, tennis courts and Korean Memorial on River Street
  

• Seymour Park, a small strip across from St. Bernard's convent
  

• Mullen Park, corner of River Street and Lake Flower Avenue
  

• Welcome Garden on Lake Colby Drive
  

• No Man's Land, between the back of the Vest Pocket Park and the parking lot on the site of the Pontiac Theatre

From the Lake Placid News, November 17, 1977, p. 1

Man with Designs
By BILL McLAUGHLIN

The man who planned New York City's Central Park also had designs on Saranac Lake.

The late Edward Clark Whiting, chief architect for Olmstead Bros. Firm in 1909 provided the guideposts that subsequent generations have followed in community development and beautification. Mr. Whiting had been responsible for the plan and design of Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn in addition to many other parks across the nation.

The highly regarded architect was brought to Saranac Lake by Walter Cluett, the shirt manufacturer who was one of the community's prime movers at the turn of the century. Mr. Cluett turned to the nationally known Olmsted Bros. concern in his desire to make Rockledge, still an area of tasteful beauty off East Pine Street a unique development.

AT MR. CLUETT'S urging, the firm's chief architect turned his talents to the community as a whole. The result of his efforts was the 1909 "Olmsted Report — a blueprint for beauty that is little known today.

The Olmsted Report was issued officially by the Saranac Lake Village Improvement Society (VIS) in 1910. It is a tribute to the VIS that the suggestions and options were followed to the letter whenever possible

Architect Whiting pointed out immediately that Saranac Lake contained areas of special geologic formation and landscape interest which were of great value He warned that "once destroyed they cannot be replaced." The community, he emphasized, had grown with extraordinary rapidity through its health-resort qualities. It had in fact, he said, "twice doubled its size in 20 years."

In spite of Saranac Lake's climate and beauty. Mr. Whiting could see that someday the bubble would burst. The village had no sustaining industry or manufacturing properties that could preserve its life beyond the point where other equally healthful areas would become competitive and thereby reduce the population of Saranac Lake.

THIS COMPETITIVE factor made future planning imperative, since people came to Saranac Lake from all parts of the United States and left with impressions of the community

He said:

"There is a great and peculiar value in making Saranac Lake as attractive as possible in doing every thing to enhance the pleasure of living and to augment rather than impair the village's curative value for tuberculosis.

Mr. Whiting stressed that the community would need all the essentials of a model city. He strongly advised doing everything conducive to the neatness and attractiveness of the town. He said:

"If these things are desirable in an ordinary commercial town, they must be far more desirable in a village or city chiefly of dwelling a community, therefore where much time must be spent in idle contemplation of one's surroundings.

"To what extent one's surroundings, ugly or beautiful, may retard or accelerate a man's recovery I cannot say but judging from their well known effect upon the happiness and well being of a normally sensitive man, I am inclined to believe that the effect is not to be neglected as a factor in the curing of a disease like pulmonary tuberculosis.

The visions that Mr. Whiting projected are easily discernable in the contemporary planning of Saranac Lake. He immediately established parks and playgrounds as a primary priority for longer range beautification.

IT WAS MR Whiting who advocated the extension of Church Street to Bloomingdale Avenue. His first concern was for the shores of Lake Flower. He stressed that a permanent park must be planned from the Riverside Hotel to the narrows of the river at the lake's south end He said:

"This taking of the land had best include all the land between the lake shore and the surrounding streets, namely River Street, Lake Flower Avenue, Maple Street and Woodland Avenue.

"All undesirable buildings will, of course, be removed and the lake shores treated as a park. The surrounding streets can be widened and treated as parkways to accommodate traffic and pleasure driving. The lake thus becomes the central feature of a beautiful park in the heart of the city.

Such development is coming to pass 67 years later. He also advised preserving intact The Pines between the railroad track and Moody Pond. He urged the control of Pisgah property and would like to have seen Pisgah kept as a public reservation.

Much importance was given to river bank planning, protection of the channel, protection from pollution, purchase of shoreline when ever possible, removal of unsightly structures along the water, and a walkway planted with trees with the entire length inside the village planned as a permanent park with playgrounds.

The plan included strong advice on tree planting along the village main streets as well as in residential areas. Mr. Whiting said in 1909:

"PERHAPS THERE is no single element which impresses one so quickly on entering a community for the first time as the absence or presence of street trees. Saranac Lake is so young and has grown so quickly that street trees are very scarce."

He advised a planting program at that time. Little planting was done — valuable street areas were usurped gradually for telephone and electrical transmission service.

The tree-planting program today is already assured. In fact, two maples were placed last summer in front of the Harrietstown Town Hall.

Mr. Whiting's guideposts to beauty mark the wav for the current efforts to revitalize the village.

From the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, Saturday, May 31, 2003

Society works to uphold the Olmstead Plan

SARANAC LAKE - The National Association for Olmsted Parks is currently celebrating Olmsted Centennials with selected reprints of the landscape architect's writings and individual Olmsted Park celebrations.

Among Frederick Law Olmsted's prolific designs are Boston's Fenway Park ("Emerald Necklace"), New York's Central Park and Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

In Saranac Lake a few forward-looking businessmen recognized early the need of a plan for the rapidly sprouting community and the potential beauty of the lake and river.

They retained the Olmsted Brothers to make a study, dated 1908. Submitted to the village board in 1909, the Olmsted Plan for the Improvement of Saranac Lake was turned down as being too expensive and taking commercial property from the tax rolls.

Heartily agreeing that land is a resource and not a commodity, on April 10, 1910 a group of local women organized formally to bring the Olmsted Plan into reality. The Adirondack Daily Enterprise committed an entire issue to reprinting the Olmsted Plan, the formation of the Village Improvement Society (VIS), and a complimentary editorial comment.

"Coming to Saranac Lake last summer (1907)," wrote James Clark Whiting, the Olmsted architect assigned to the village, "I was struck almost immediately with the potential value of Lake Flower and its immediate surroundings as public property … there is no one step … that will be of greater permanent benefit to the village as a whole than the acquisition of complete control over this lake and its shores... all the undesirable buildings will be removed and the lake shores treated as a park.

"I realize fully the great cost of taking these lake shores and that many people will be opposed to spending public funds in that way. But I do not know of a case where parks or parkways have been built … that abutting property has not increased in values…"

The Village Improvement Society was up and running, distributing copies of the Olmsted Plan and exhorting village leaders to: support it.

1912 - VIS purchased a triangle of land at the junction of Church and River streets and created what is now, with a considerable amount shaved off by street widening, the Veterans' Triangle. This is currently owned by the village which shares maintenance with VIS.

1918 - VIS took its only mortgage to purchase its first Lake Flower property, a swampy, stump-filled area across from Triangle Park (River Street Park, later renamed Prescott Park).

1924 - The Jenkins property on Olive Street was given to VIS, left undeveloped until 1969 when Philip G. Wolff drew up a plan for an Arboretum (Sunset Park Adirondack Arboretum).

1925 - The mortgage finally paid off, VIS acquired the Callanan property on Lake Flower to develop Baldwin Park, (tennis courts and Korean Memorial) and bought a small strip across from St. Bernard's convent to create Seymour Park.

1927 - The Mullen property, corner of River Street and Lake Flower Avenue (Mullen Park).

1936 – Riverside Park, purchased by the village after the Riverside Inn had been torn down. VIS assumed responsibility, retained Philip G. Wolff, then a Cornell landscape student, to design and supervise building the park in 1937-38.

The Saranac Riverbank

"I do most strongly recommend that both shores of the river from Lake Flower to the railroad bridge be taken and permanently controlled by the town primarily as a safeguard against undue encroachments into the river channel of buildings, refuse, dumps, etc..." the Olmsted Plan advises.

1949 - Having exhausted, at least temporarily, Lake Flower parksite potential, VIS turned to the Saranac river, purchasing the Denny property, at the corner of Bloomingdale Avenue and Pine Street, (Denny Park).

1955 - VIS purchased the Newman property on Dorsey Street (Beaver Park) and, 1960 the Leggett parcel on Dorsey Street at the entrance to lower Main Street parking lot (Dorsey Street Park).

When the village developed the lower Main Street parking lot, VIS agitated for and received permission to turn the river bank into a modest grassy parkland area. William Scopes donated six maple trees of which three still stand on the new River Walk.

By the late 1950s upkeep on the Prescott Park swimming beach and other Lake Flower parks were beyond VIS income and the Society turned over its Lake Flower parks to the village "to remain parks in perpetuity." VIS remains in an advisory capacity.

1970 - Moving with the times, VIS opened its membership to men.

1972 - VIS bought a lot on upper Main and Pine streets plus adjacent property on the river for taxes, (Triangle Park, Herb Garden and riverbank).

1976 - VIS created the Church Street Extension Parklette on a small riverside strip of village property beside the new parking lot. The village reclaimed the Parklette in 2002 for the River Walk.

With the possibility of lakefront buildings being demolished to widen River Street into a four-lane highway then-VIS president Gertrude Woodruff campaigned persistently to secure Lake Flower properties for continuous parkland. Surmounting opposition, VIS prevailed. On Nov. 27, 1977, the VIS president stood proudly with state officials on the podium as the new Riverside Park sweep was dedicated. VIS had at last realized one vital facet of the Olmsted Plan.

Small open spaces

"Small open spaces, scattered about a village … furnish the opportunity for people to rest outdoors ... such small bits of park are very real and important elements in making for civic beauty and the joy of living…" the Olmsted Plan notes.

1972 - VIS purchased for taxes the 96-98 Main Street lot, now Vest Pocket Park and possibly VIS' most heavily enjoyed public park.

1990 – Welcome Garden, Public property on Lake Colby Drive.

1999 - A small triangular garden, junction Prospect Avenue and Virginia Street (Prospect Corner).

How does VIS accomplish this? VIS has always worked on spare budget. Each of its parks and civic projects has an individual volunteer chairman responsible for overall maintenance, plantings and budget. Members plant, weed, pick up litter and oversee their parks. Perennials are donated from members' gardens.

VIS' 2003 budget is $6,500 to cover insurance, a groundsman, purchase of annuals and two middle school environmental camperships. VIS also receives generous in-kind support without which it could not accomplish its goals. VIS welcomes new memberships and always seeks new parks.