A Walking Tour of North Creek
Exploring the Last Stop on Thomas Durant's Adirondack Railroad
Introduction
Welcome to North Creek, the last stop of Thomas Durant's Adirondack Railroad. That made it the gateway to the great camps of the Adirondacks and an important center for freight and commerce.
The railroad also made it easy to get to Gore Mountain. That's why the Schenectady Wintersports Club picked North Creek as the destination of its first Snow Train on March 4, 1934 - 90 years ago.It was here that Carl Schaefer in 1935 jerry-rigged an old Buick to create New York’s first rope tow. In 1946, town leaders built a 3000-foot T-bar, the longest in the East at that time. In 1964, New York State established the Gore Mountain Ski Area, which has been growing ever since.
We'll tell you all of this history and more in this 1.5 mile tour, which we begin with a curtain: The O'Keeffe Opera House curtain, which hung for a half century in a large hall on the second floor above R.R. Higgins Drug Store, a building and business that was later acquired by pharmacist James O'Keeffe.
The O'Keeffe Opera House was for several decades the center of North Creek's social life, hosting plays, lectures, dances, church services, political rallies, silent movies, and even high school graduations.
Ten Main Street businesses on this hand-painted curtain, which hung in the O'Keeffe Opera House.
If the Tannery Pond Center is open, you can go in see it hanging in the lobby to the left.
Ten Main Street businesses commissioned the production of this hand-painted curtain, which served as an early form of advertising. When the Tannery Pond Center opened in 2002 thanks to a gift from Elise and Woody Widlund, the Johnsburg Historical Society found the perfect place to hang this 10-foot by 17-foot artifact as a reminder of the community's history early in the 20th century. We'll tell you about these businesses on our tour's last leg on Main Street.
You'll find other mementos from North Creek's past here as well as a gallery that's open Tuesday through Friday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and between noon and 4 p.m. on Saturdays.
When you're ready for the tour's next leg, make your way to the driveway on the building's south side and head toward the loading dock you'll find at the building's rear. Veering into the woods on the right is a path that will take you along North Creek to the Hudson. Follow this trail.
Mill Pond
Following the path you'll find at the end of the Tannery Pond Center's driveway, you'll come immediately to an interpretive sign that shows you Mill Pond as it once looked - until storms washed out for good the dam that had been built in the late 1840s.
Soon after the sign, you'll come to a wall that we surmise was part of the concrete and stone dam built by George Ives to replace the log and timber structures that had preceded it. A lumberman, Ives also built a sluice high on Gore Mountain down which he could send logs to the pond employing water from Roaring Brook.
William Waddell tells the story of a young Ives employee named Kenneth Eldridge who, for a lark, decided to ride a log a short distance down the sluice and jumped onto a four-foot piece.
"He found that the thing went so fast he was unable to get off. He took a wild ride all the way down and dropped off the end of the sluice some 15 feet in the Mill Pond. He was very lucky there were not many pieces of wood in the pond as he could have been thrown on them and killed."
As the trail takes you around this wall, look to your left at the substantial clearing and toward the North Creek Laundromat on Bridge Street. That's where the main building of the tannery stood, about the length of a football field. At its peak, the tannery transformed as many as 30,000 hides annually into rugged leather for saddles and shoes.
Before the tannery, lumberjacks built the first semi-permanent structures here for themselves and their horses between 1840 and 1850. They did much of their cutting in winter so they could more easily transport their 13-foot logs by horse-drawn sleds and stack them side by side. When the snow melt was at its highest each spring, they shoved them into the stream to float them down to the Hudson, where they embark on a 40-mile journey to the sawmills of Glens Falls.
The tannery built by Milton Sawyer and Wheeler Meade in 1852 was North Creek's first real business that required the construction of housing. They used the creek not as a means of transport, but as an energy source. Mill Pond's water wheel drove the scrapers and hammers that cleaned and softened the hides before they were placed in large tannin-filled vats. Ultimately, they would employ 25 men and annually transform into leather as many as 30,000 hides sourced chiefly from Brazil and Argentina.
Those countries had the cattle, but we had the tannin from hemlocks that was essential in the tanning process. Hides arrived by shit at the Port of Albany. They were packed on barges on the Champlain and feeder canals and brought to Glens Falls. The hides were then stacked on wagons and brought to North Creek along rough plank roads. Hides were also delivered to tanneries at the Glen, Wevertown, and Oregon, southwest of Bakers Mills.
Glen Pearsall writes:
"Imagine the signs and smells of this active tannery with its men shouting orders above the sound of tannery machinery, the smells of raw hides and the tannery "baths," and the horses helping to bring in the hemlock bark stacked tall on wagons and sleds."
"Hides were salted and dried to preserve them for the long trips to eastern seaboard ports. Hides were often packed with flesh and dirt that caused parts of them to rot. Some hides had holes that were caused by ticks and other insects common to more tropical regions. Getting the hides to the tanner was surely dirty, smelly work."
Hemlocks would be cut, stripped of their bark, and left on the ground to decay. With four tanneries in Johnsburg alone, much of the land around here was left barren and its water polluted in the mid and later 1800s.
Here's how a New York Times described the East Branch of the Sacandaga River in 1889, where the Oregon tannery was located:
"The foul combination of the hemlock juices and malodorous hides flows in an inky stream into the river which kills the fish that have the misfortune of swimming into it from their mountain streams."
Six years later, voters would approve the addition of the Forever Wild clause to the New York State Constitution, strengthening the protections that had been imposed when the State Forest Preserve was created in 1885.
Tanneries typically would have to close within 20 to 40 years because all the hemlocks within a ten-mile radius would be destroyed. That's what happened to North Creek's tannery. After it burned in 1890, Billy Baker built a sawmill on the site, opening it on August 29th. Three days later, half of it was destroyed when the dam went out. He rebuilt it two weeks later, showing the kind of determination that was typical of these early settlers.
Before the dam was washed out for the last time in the 1940s, James O'Keeffe, the local pharmacist, ran an ice-harvesting operation here.
He would hire several teams of men and horses to cut the ice by hand and then, with pike poles, push the cakes up a ramp and onto a sled, which the horses would drag to O'Keeffe's pharmacy. They then lugged the ice into the basement, where they would stack it and pack it in sawdust.
There were no refrigerators in those days, so the ice was needed to keep food cold in the warmer months. "A full cake would sell for fifty cents and a half cake for twenty-five cents," writes his son Dan O'Keefe in Halfway to Heaven, his invaluable memoir of "livin' in the 'Crick."
Adirondack Railroad
As the major promoter of the Union Pacific Railroad, Thomas Durant was made rich in part by his role in the Credit Mobilier debacle, which we learned briefly in our American history classes was the most egregious political scandal in the 19th century.
But we can say this much for Durant: He knew how to get things done, and he did a lot for North Creek. After Sawyer and Meade opened their tannery in 1852, Durant established a home here and acquired large tracts of land all the way to Blue Mountain Lake, Raquette Lake, and Long Lake. In North Creek, he built a sawmill and wood-working mill. And, in 1865, he started building the Adirondack Railroad, starting in Saratoga Springs and following the west bank of the Hudson River 60 miles to North Creek. Way back in 1848, a first attempt was made by the Saratoga and Sackets Harbor Railroad, which laid 20 miles of disconnected track north of Hadley, but the venture failed. As the end of the Civil War neared, Durant resurrected that effort.
Born in Lee, Massachusetts in 1820, Durant had planned to become a doctor and actually earned a degree from Albany Medical College in 1840. But instead of practicing medicine, he promptly joined his uncle’s flour and grain business and started speculating in stocks. In time, he achieved a remarkable ability to manipulate stocks, especially railroad stocks. Being volatile and plentiful, they were an especially promising terrain for grifters, a bit like crypto today.
During the Civil War, Durant used his participation in the Missouri & Mississippi Railroad to make a fortune smuggling contraband cotton from the Confederate States. He parlayed those profits into a scheme to control the Union Pacific Railroad, through which he was able to make additional millions by overcharging the government for the track he laid for the Transcontinental Railroad.
In 1869, Durant was there with Leland Stanford at Promontory Point, Utah to drive the celebrated golden spike. By that time, he had completed 37 miles of his Adirondack Railroad to Thurman. Two years later, he reached North Creek with a plan to extend the railroad first to the big McIntyre iron mine in Tahawus and onward to the western shore of Lake Ontario.
The Erie Canal had been one big idea for opening the young nation's interior. Durant's was another. Via the Great Lakes, he would transport passengers, manufactured goods, and natural resources from the Adirondacks to the Midwest.
After reaching North Creek, Durant wanted to go another 120 miles, but the Financial Panic of 1873 nearly wiped him out. It touched off a six-year depression and made further financing of the railroad impossible. But North Creek thrived. The railroad brought in tourists and made it cheaper to transport hides and leather, garnet ore, iron ore, and wood products.
Durant’s charter with the New York State gave him control of nearly one-fifth of the Adirondacks. He ultimately acquired more than one million acres free of taxes for 20 years. He envisioned the Adirondacks as a wilderness from which to wrest further wealth. He saw it also as an immense playground that his son William would develop by inventing the Adirondack “Great Camp.” His most renowned creations include Camp Pine Knot, Sagamore Camp, and Camp Uncas, all showcasing rustic elegance, native materials, and superb mountain craftsmanship. Buyers included Carnegies, Vanderbilts, Morgans, and Rockefellers.
Durant started his railroad with one engine called the General Hancock, a passenger car, a mail and baggage car, and four or five flat cars. Then he quickly doubled the number of engines, passenger, mail and baggage cars and added fifty freight cars, storing them in the large railroad yard to which we'll soon bring you.
If you haven't already reached the bridge that told north-bound passengers they were about to pull into the North Creek station, you soon will. We're about a third of a mile from the station at this point.
Hudson River Bridge
Coming up on your right is the first bridge to be built over the Hudson River in North Creek. The year: 1875. The abutments flanking the bridge on both sides are original. The bridge was used for a time to transport titanium ore mined at Tahawus across the Hudson on 52 sleds. Once across the bridge, the ore would be loaded into railroad cars and shipped to Northern Iron Company in Port Henry to improve the product. An interpretive sign describes the near catastrophe that occurred during the winter of 1913-14 when a 30-foot ice front was reported to be coming down the river, threatening the bridge. Over the years ice jams took their toll on the bridge, and it was replaced in 1929 and renovated in 1974.
ADK Glassblowing Studio
Operating between Memorial Day and the end of September, the Adirondack Glassblowing Studio occupies one of two buildings that were built by William R. and Lee Waddell, who established a successful general store in Wevertown in 1865 and then expanded their business to North Creek.
First, they established a slaughterhouse that produced beef and lamb mostly for such hotels as the Prospect House on Blue Mountain Lake and other hotels on Indian Lake. Then they established a stage line that ran 20 miles from North Creek to Indian Lake and built one of these buildings as a stable for their horses. They bought this property from William W. Durant, Thomas's son, in 1901.
William was also a partner in the stage line that ran from Riverside - now called Riparius - to the great Gilded Age hotels on Schroon Lake. When motor cars and Stanley Steamers came on the market around 1910, William was among the first to use them. No longer needing horses, he converted his North Creek stables into stores for grain, hay and coal.
At this point, I'll be telling stories that are packed closely together. To hear them in their entirety, you'll want to stop as soon as the story starts and stop to hear it out. I'll tell you when to move on and where to go.
North Creek Rail Station
Built by Thomas Durant in 1874, the North Creek Railroad Station was on the brink of demolition in 1993 when a group of local residents formed the North Creek Railway Depot Preservation Association and purchased the station. Today, the station serves as a museum of local history, showcasing the railroad’s rich heritage and the pivotal role it played in the region's development. One of its exhibits spotlights Teddy Roosevelt's celebrated midnight ride in the early hours of September 14, 1901. That’s when he was summoned from the base of Mount Marcy to join a dying William McKlnley in Buffalo. Roosevelt received the somber news of McKinley's death on this station’s platform. Another exhibit spotlights the railroad's role in the development of skiing at Gore Mountain.
This story begins early in the Great Depression when Lake Placed hosted the 1932 Olympics. For the first time, upstate New Yorkers saw world-class athletes competing in cross-country skiing, hockey, speed skating, ski jumping, figure skating, and the "bobsleigh." Norway’s amazing Sonja Henie won gold in figure skating. Eddie Eagan won gold in the bobsleigh, making him only the second American athlete in history to win gold medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics. He had won gold in boxing in 1920.
The games were an eye-opener for a half-dozen young men from North Creek who returned home determined to revive the economy and turn Gore Mountain into a destination for skiing. Driving five miles up the road that led to Barton Mine, they cleared an old logging road to a width of ten to 30 feet and named it the Pete Gay Trail.
For 25 young people from Schenectady — many who worked at GE — the experience was similarly life-changing. Launching the Schenectady Winter Sports Club, they started organizing a “Snow Train” to take them to more mountainous terrain. Joining the trail-builders in North Creek, they organized the first Snow Train on March 4, 1934, 90 years ago. So popular did the D&H become as a convenient way to get to ski country the railroad started scheduling Snow Trains from Albany and New York City as well. The popularity of skiing at Gore grew throughout the Great Depression, making North Creek a national success story.
Let’s continue up Railroad Place.
North Creek Woodworking
This long building opposite the Depot Museum once was home to the North Creek Woodworking Corporation. They made simple wooden items like broom and ax handles, knobs, pallets, and heels for ladies' shoes.
A big funnel driven by an airplane propellor pulled sawdust out of the air and drove it to the tower at the end of the building. The sawdust was blown into carriers hauled away by trucks to be used an absorbent material in cat litter and other products.
When the Adirondack Railroad arrived in 1871, hotels were among the first businesses to be established and naturally they were built nearby. That's why John McInerny built the American Hotel in 1871 on the site of today's Phoenix Inn Resort, which is coming up on Main Street. When you make the turn, you'll pass the small red cottage known as the Owens House. Built in 1857, this once was home of the Owens family and today is believed to be North Creek's oldest existing structure. Owned by the North Creek Depot Museum, it will soon be renovated and made into a space for additional collections.
You'll also pass a Little Red Gondola, one of 110 imported from Switzerland and installed at Gore Mountain in 1968. You'll see another a ways up Main Street. We'll tell you its story there. For now, please continue to the Phoenix Inn Resort.
Phoenix Inn Resort
While fire destroyed John McInerny's American Hotel in 1903, Jake Waldron gave it another go on this site in 1920. His newer version offered steam heat, a beautiful garnet bar, and a dance floor, which made the American Hotel a favorite for country bands.
Carl Schaeffer operated his ski school from the New American Hotel during the winter of 1935-36. That was the same ski season he created New York State's first rope tow after studying what they did in Woodstock, Vermont. He planted a line of poles with pulleys wrapped rope around the rear axle of a 1929 Buick he'd bought for $100.
Developer Eliot Monter tore down the New American Hotel and replaced it with the 31-room Copperfield Inn in 1990. Renamed the Phoenix Inn Report in 2017, the hotel was purchased by Zihan "Hannah" Ren and her father Buhai Ren early in 2023. It's fitting that the community's largest hotel still operates on the site of the old American Hotel.
Let's continue to the Tassi House.
The Tassi House
When you think of Adirondack architecture, you might picture first the typical Adirondack Great Camp, with its lavish log siding, stone fireplaces, and twig furniture. That's the style that William W. Durant innovated for the wealthy. Most Adirondack locals lived in simple one- or two-story farmhouses, while retail stores were similarly unpretentious, with commercial operations on the ground floor and living quarters above. In addition to the two-story porches on their front facades, common features of this style included clapboard and wood shingles, double hung and plate glass windows and such details as brackets, paneled doors, and decorative posts and cornices. This house is named for Louis Tassi, a cobbler who ran his business in the small building next door. It was constructed as a three-family residence in 1926 by J. Frank Waldron, a builder whose work is reflected in a number of Main Street structures.
Smith's Restaurant
Next we come to the building that was home to Smith's Restaurant, established by Frank and Anna Smith in 1924. This originally was a bakery with its public space on the street level and residence and overhanging porch above. When Adirondack guides came out of the woods, when river drivers brought their logs down the Hudson River gorge, when prohibition rum runners stopped for a break on their way to New York, when the first ski trains pulled into North Creek, this landmark restaurant was there to feed them.
“They had a bakery downstairs,” Tom Butler recalls. “In the early morning, you could smell those fresh donuts and buns. The aroma came up through. You usually ate about twice what you're supposed to. All the truckers and loggers stopped there with their log trucks."
Directly across the street was the Red Diner, which had the best cheeseburgers and hot turkey sandwiches.
“It was like a street diner you’d find down in Albany with a curved roof and stools and benches and more seating in the back,” says Tom. “You could probably seat 40 to 50 people. It had fabulous cooks, a Wurlitzer jukebox, and pinball machines for the young ones to play.”
Hudson River Trading Company
Frank Kelly's Livery
In the days before automobiles, people needed a place to keep their horses and carriages. In North Creek, this was it, built by Frank Kelly. Signs of this early use are still clearly evident, as Laurie Arnheiter, the building's current owner, will be glad to show you if the store is open. Horses had their own entrance on the ground floor, while carriages were parked upstairs. After Kelly died, C.W. Sullivan reopened his grocery store in this building after his first grocery right next door was destroyed by fire. Laurie's family opened the Hudson River Trading Company here in 1996. After filling 7,000-square feet of retail space in this building, she acquired the historic "Dr. Lee" building next door and opened the Hungry Crow as a market and tasting room.
Hungry Crow
Long forgotten, Lee's Save the Baby was a popular cough remedy in the early 1900's. Made from petroleum jelly, camphor, oregano, rosemary, and balsam oils, it was rubbed on the chest. Its inventor was Dr. William R. Lee, a 1902 graduate of the Columbia University School for Physicians and Surgeons who built this home in 1915.
Dr. Lee kept his horse and buggy next door in Frank Kelly's Livery. After contracting tuberculosis, he abandoned his medical practice while pursuing a cure. When his condition improved, he became the Town of Johnsburg's health officer.
The original structure had open porches on both floors with Dr. Lee's office in the downstairs front public space. When he contracted tuberculosis, he enclosed two-thirds of his upper porch in glass.
Let's keep going to Walgreens, which long ago was known as the O'Keeffe Pharmacy with its second floor "Opera House".
Walgreen's
O'Keeffee Opera House
Remember the O’Keeffe Opera House curtain we showed you at the start of this tour? It was here on the second floor that it hung throughout the early decades of the 20th century. At first, this space was called “Higgins Hall” because R.R. Higgins operated a pharmacy on the first floor. In 1917, James O’Keeffe bought the building, and so the space became known as the O’Keeffe Opera House.
In Halfway to Heaven, his memoir about “livin’ in the ‘Crick,’” James’ son, Dan O’Keeffe, describes Saturday nights in the twenties, when all the movies shown here were silent.
“We'd climb the stairs with our dates and a bag of popcorn and watch the movies as the pianists, Blanche Alexander and T. Landon, played the songs of the day and the younger kids read the subtitles out loud. One can imagine the thrill when the "talkies" make their debut in the Crick.”
Izzy's
Dave and Kathy Waite opened Izzy's here in 2012 with a 100-percent home-cooked menu. The building has a long history dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, which is apparent in the original tin ceiling and scroll work under the eaves. Nathan and Millie Braverman opened this building as a dry goods store, and you can still see their original wooden display counters and built-in cupboards.
In 1926, it was purchased by Gabra (Ja-bra) Baroudi, who among all of North Creek's early entrepreneurs may have the most interesting backstory. A Syrian born in 1872, he was sent to America by his mother at age 16 to escape constant street fighting with Turks. Gabra first found to work as a door-to-door salesman, peddling wares between New York City and Albany. Then, with his four brothers, he started buying and establishing a series of businesses that included the Happy Hour Theater, a restaurant, a barbershop, four apartments, and a grocery store that catered to "camps" all the way to Schroon Lake.
In 1990, developer Eliot Monter replaces the "Baroudi Block" with what we now call the Tops shopping center. This was around the same time he built the Copperfield Inn in 1990.
Let's keep going. We'll tell you about the fire that destroyed the Hewitt-Barbour Garage, where Hey Days pizzeria stands now on the other side of Main Street. Keep walking toward Marsha's Restaurant and this narrative should trigger.
Tops Friendly Market
Adirondack Hotel/Baroudi Block
There was almost no fire-fighting equipment in the Adirondacks at the turn of the 20th century. That made hotels and homes highly vulnerable to the hazards of uncleaned chimneys, mishandled kerosene, and guests who smoked. The origins of these blazes were sometimes suspect, making insurance underwriiters wary of Adirondack real estate. One impressive structure lost to fire in this section of Main Street was the Adirondack Hotel, a three-story frame structure built around 1885. With accommodations for 100 guests, it became the unofficial headquarters for men employed by the D&H Railroad. It burned in 1916. Then, just three years later, the Straight House burned. That was another large hotel further up the street.
In 1925, the property that the Tops shopping center occupies today was bought by Gabra Baroudi, whom we met earlier. He and his four brothers established so many businesses in this section it came to be known simply as the “Baroudi Block,” offering the Happy Hour Theater, a restaurant, a barbershop, four apartments, and a grocery store that catered to "camps" all the way to Schroon Lake. Baroudi was the first in the area to make a daily run to Albany for fresh produce. One of the most enterprising entrepreneurs in North Creek, Baroudi entered into a number of real estate ventures and even owned a small factory in Riparius that made bowling pins. Developer Eliot Monter replaced the “Baroudi Block” with this shopping center around the same time he built the Copperfield Inn in 1990.
Hey Days
At this point, we direct your attention to the other side of Main Street, where Hey Days pizzeria now stands. This used to be the site of the Hewitt-Barbour Garage -- until 1965, when it was destroyed by one of the most intense fires in North Creek history.
Tom "Buck-shot" Butler remembers the day clearly. He was a volunteer firefighter who had just bought a new green Chevy pick-up truck from Alexander's Garage, which was located up the street where the Tannery Pond Center now stands. He heard the fire whistle sound from the firehouse that was located on the other side of Main Street just a few hundred yards behind where we're standing now. He immediately responded and raced up Main Street toward the firehouse. But he never made it that far because he could see the fire ring raging within the garage, "feeding on all of that oil and other substances you wouldn't want anywhere near flames," he says.
He pulled over to the curb at this spot right in front of us, and rushed to help.
For nine hours, they unsuccessfully battled that blaze, which was so intense that it blew the windows out of Baroudi's Alpine Restaurant, which preceded to Marsha's Restaurant. When Buckshot finally was able to go home, he returned to his brand new Chevy to find that one side had been totally changes from "green to burnt." It had a quarter mile on the odometer.
Let's continue to the H'art Studio and Gallery. This was formally Swain's Funeral Parlor.
H'art Studio and Gallery
In 1896, the Swain brothers opened a funeral home here after purchasing this property from Thomas Durant. In addition to selling caskets, they sold furniture, bedding supplies, window shades, rugs and carpets. They also were agents for pianos and grafonolas, an early kind of record player.
Celebrated local artist Kate Hartley established the H'art Studio and Gallery here in 2021, showcasing a variety of fine arts and hand-crafted objects from 50 North Country artists. Offerings include paintings, mosaics, watercolors, jewelry, cards, books, and calendars. She also hosts a range of classes, making it a hub for artists and art enthusiast alike.
Look up Main Street 200 yards and you'll see Kate's masterpiece, the Mosaic Wall. Over a ten-year period, she engaged 2000 volunteers in creating this 180-foot piece of public art, the largest in the North Country. This project transformed a 9-foot-high concrete retaining wall into a stunning mosaic masterpiece, depicting a variety of scenes from the Adirondacks, including white-water rafting, downhill skiing, fishing, and local flora and fauna. Incorporated in this work are more than 200,000 tiles and bits of shell and glass.
In the rear of the store, Kate keeps boxes of supplies used in creating the Mosaic Wall. "This was once the embalming room," she explains, showing you the exterior door through which the deceased would be discretely carried.
Our next step is 274 Main Street, the impressively all-brick former headquarters of North Creek National Bank.
North Creek National Bank
One day in 1910, Frank Husselback walked into Arbuckle's Barber Shop, which at that time occupied this spot on Main Street. He represented a group of local businessmen who had joined in creating a bank in North Creek, and they had determined that this would be the ideal place to build it.
"Would you be interested in selling?" Mr. Husselback asked Mr. Arbuckle as he was giving a customer a shave. When Mr. Arbuckle said he would, Mr. Husselback asked for his price. When Mr. Arbuckle gave it to him, Mr. Husselback, said "Sold!" Whereupon, it is reported, Mr. Arbuckle "immediately took off his barber coat, leaving the customer sitting in the chair with lather on his face, and walked out the door."
The building was sold that day and was soon in business as the North Creek National Bank. In 1927, the bank moved up the street to a new structure on the site of the former Straight House, which was destroyed by fire in 1920. I'll tell you that story when we come to it.
Let's move on to the sad story of yet another fire. The victim this time was The Gables, the mansion owned by Thomas Durant.
On our way to the Alpine Lodge, we'll pass barVino. This was once an A&P owned by Maurice Ashe, who also owned Ashe's Hotel in Warrensburg. James and Genevieve Morwood later bought it and made it an IGA.
Alpine Lodge
The Alpine Lodge was opened as the Alpine Motel by Joe and Gloria Baroudi in 1957. A decade later, they opened the Alpine Restaurant, which is now Marsha's.
But let's go way back to 1871. That's when Thomas Durant, who built the Adirondack Railroad, bought the "Coleman House" which stood on this property and renamed it the Gables. This ultimately became a compound with stables, greenhouses, a chicken house, and numerous out buildings. The main house was located down the slope at the end of what we now call Baroudi Lane. Durant died here on October 6, 1885. Fire claimed the Gables in 1959, when temperatures sank to near zero in mid-March.
As you pass the Alpine Lodge, note the Little Red Gondola beside the main entrance. When the state installed New York State's first gondola at Gore in 1969, it imported 110 of these four-passenger cabins from Switzerland. Thirty years later, these small cabins were made obsolete by the eight-passenger cabins we see in today's Northwoods Gondola. The Olympic Regional Development Authority kept about 70 of the four-passenger cabins to loan out to various organizations in the area. You'll see a number of these around.
Let's keep going to Cafe Sarah.
Cafe Sarah
John Wade Building
John Wade was a butcher who opened a meat store here on Christmas morning, 1894. You'd enter it off Circle Avenue. Wade was also an undertaker, and you’d enter his funeral home off Main Street. Later, this building housed the Post Office on the left and the New York Power and Light offices on the right.
On the empty lot to the left of this store, Wade’s son, Charles, owned a grocery, which he advertised on the O’Keeffe Opera House curtain. In the 1950s, that burned along with the Wade Hotel, which was owned at the time by the Farrell family.
When the existing Wade building was renovated for Café Sarah in 2000 by Sarah's dad, Larry Hayden, they had to raise the entire building six inches to rebuild the old foundation. The Fourth of July poster that hangs inside was discovered in the floorboards and apparently dates to 1897. Sara opened the Cafe after an apprenticeship in French pastries at a high-end French restaurant in Seattle. She wanted to run her own bakery and so came back home to launch it. Her maple-glazed cinnamon buns are a local favorite.
Braley & Noxon Hardware
When you cross Circle Avenue, you'll come to Braley and Noxon Hardware, which goes all the way back to 1888 when two cousins in Chestertown -- William Noxon and Alfred Braley -- saw the growth taking place in North Creek and decided to open a hardware store. They put up this building and moved their business into it in 1896. Early inventory included horse-drawn mowing machines, wheelbarrows, grindstones, and wooden barrels, plus hardware and housewares. Braley and Noxon made news in 1901 when they installed acetylene gas for illumination, replacing kerosene lamps.
In the store’s early days, Cora Montgomery ran her millinery shop on the store’s south side. She sold hats for every season, some beautifully trimmed with ostrich feathers, flowers, or both. She priced them at $1.50 and up. Her store is among the ten advertisers featured on the O’Keeffe Opera House curtain, as are Braley and Noxon.
Following William Noxon’s death in 1930, the store was owned and maintained by a series of descendants, including Ernest Noxon and his sisters, Grace, Ruth, and Mary who assumed ownership until 1988, a century from the store’s founding. In 2003, the store was acquired by present owners Richard and Agnes Green.
Look across the street and you’ll see a colorful concrete retaining wall. We suggest you cross for a closer look.
Mosaic Wall
In 2010, local artist Kate Hartley looked at this concrete wall and saw a huge canvas. Enlisting more than 500 volunteers – local residents, seasonal visitors, students and artists, she created this masterpiece, representing natural resources and recreational opportunities in the area. At 180 feet, it’s the largest piece of public art in the North Country. The 10-year project was completed in the fall of 2020.
Some have wondered how many tiles and bits of glass and seashells are incorporated in the mural. In 2016 the local seventh grade took on the challenge. According to their best calculation, the total number comes to 159,374 individual pieces.
Bottoms Up Building
This three-story structure with a slate roof and porches on all three levels has the distinction of having its floor level raised as added space was added. What is now the third floor was originally at ground level.
Built prior to 1893, its owner, Lou Pereau, owned land only to where "the building's eaves dripped," so adding on meant going up. This "bottoms up" building once housed a fuel company, early telephone offices, and apartments.
If we continue on the west side of Main Street, we come to the United Methodist Church and its parsonage on the right. This was where Howard and Bertha Kenyon ran their business in lumber and “ladies and gents furnishings,” which they advertised on the O’Keeffe Opera House curtain. After Bertha’s death, the church acquired the property to build a new parsonage because the one across the street had been destroyed by fire.
Community Bank
Alas, the Straight House burned to the ground on the night of January 18, 1920.
"The wind was blowing from the north and the fire fanned by the strong wind quickly spread throughout the building, " writes William Waddell. "A bucket brigade was formed from the 'Mill Pond' but it was a case of too little, too late."
North Creek Community Bank, which first occupied the building where Mr. Arbuckle had his barbershop, relocated to this spot. Among its many iterations since then: First Trust of Albany, Bankers Trust, Key Bank, First American, Albank, and Charter One.
The bank parking lot occupies the lot where the parsonage of the First United Methodist Church was located before it was destroyed in the same 1920 fire that took the Straight House. The building the Methodists sold to Jennifer Zimmerman in 2017 is directly across the street and now houses, Kirche, her antique store.
Because the building is expensive to heat, Jennifer generally operates her store only in warmer months and the winter holidays. When she's open, she'll have a sign outside. Continue walking on Main Street's left side to hear the building's story.
Cunningham's General Store
Cunningham’s General Store was a traditional Adirondack mercantile business that carried just about everything a family might need — food, clothing, dry goods, and wallpaper. Lots of wallpaper. That’s because most people had wood stoves, which coated the walls with so much soot that many wallpapered their kitchens every year. Sold in bulk, cookies, cheese and cold cuts were bagged or sliced as customers wanted. Potatoes were packed and sold in brown paper bags — 15 pounds or a “peck”.
Glass and foodwares were on the left. Clothing and outdoor were in the middle. Skis and related equipment were in a small room in back.
Patrick J. Cunningham started the store with his wife Catherine in 1908. His son, Butler, joined him in developing it into the major ski retail business it has become over 90 years.
The pivotal moment in this story arrived with the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics, which Butler attended with Kenneth Bennett, Howard and Guy Alexander, Lee Hewitt, Art Prescott, Dr. Braley and others.
Here’s Dick Cunningham, son of Butler:
"The Depression was really horrible. In economics, they talk about the velocity of money. Well, there wasn't any money so there wasn't much velocity. My dad sold anything you could buy at a general store -- skis, meat -- and they might take in $15 or $30 for the day.
“Now you had the Olympics. This was so exciting. 'Let's go! Let's see it!' But these young men didn't go in style. They took their tents and sleeping bags. They tented outside and went to all the events. When they came back to North Creek, they said, 'Winter doesn't have to be terrible. Life doesn't have to be boring. We've got a great mountain. We even have a road up the mountain and there are trails because they logged that whole side of the mountain and they could come down those log roads."
The Cunningham family's involvement in skiing and the shop's operations continued for generations. Pat Cunningham, a former member of the U.S. ski team, took over the business in the 1950s and managed it until 2019. Throughout its history, Cunningham's Ski Barn has not only been a commercial entity but also a significant part of the local skiing community and history.
Bridge Street
As you can see, we've almost completed our tour. Up ahead are the Tannery Pond Center and Town Hall, a building that for 30 years served as an automatic showroom before being brought into government service in the 1950s.
Where the library's parking lot now sits, George and Grace Saunders offered sandwiches, donuts and coffee at the Ideal Lunchroom.
Look to your left down Bridge Street, and you'll see the site of the tannery that Milton Sawyer and Wheeler Meade built in the 1850s, right where the North Creek Laundromat stands at the end of the road.
And on this empty lot beside the Tannery Pond Center stood Cunningham's General Store, which played a central role in the store of how skiing came to North Creek. Patrick J. Cunningham started the store with his wife Catherine in 1908. When skiing started to become popular in the late 1920s, Patrick started making skis from barrel staves and, bringing his son Butler in the business, started expanding into what we now know as the oldest continually operating ski shop in the country.
The pivotal moment in this story arrived with the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics, which Butler attended with Kenneth Bennett, Howard and Guy Alexander, Lee Hewitt, Art Prescott, Dr. Braley and others.
Here's Dick Cunningham, son of Butler:
"The Depression was really horrible. In economics, they talk about the velocity of money. Well, there wasn't any money so there wasn't much velocity. My dad sold anything you could buy at a general store -- skis, meat -- and they might take in $15 or $30 for the day.
"Now Depression was really horrible. This was so exciting. 'Let's go! Let's see it!' But these young men didn't go in style. They took their tents and sleeping bags. They tented outside and went to all the events. When they came back to North Creek, they said, 'Winter doesn't have to be terrible. Life doesn't have to be boring. We've got a great mountain. We even have a road up the mountain and there are trails because they logged that whole side of the mountain and they could come down those log roads."
The Cunningham family's involvement in skiing and the shop's operations continued for generations. Pat Cunningham, a former member of the U.S. ski team, took over the business in the 1950s and managed it until 2019. Throughout its history, Cunningham's Ski Barn has not only been a commercial entity but also a significant part of the local skiing community and history.
With that story, we'll leave you. If you still have the energy and would like to see more of North Creek, "the Carol A. Thomas Trail, which can be accessed from the rear of the lower parking lot at the Town Hall, will take you along North Creek beneath Route 28 to the Ski Bowl. That's where you'll get an up-close look at Gore Mountain.
Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this GPS-triggered history of the hamlet of North Creek.
