Kahnweiler Library, in front of the the Service Building, 2009Trudeau Sanatorium Historic District, Reference Number 31
Year built: 1893
Other names: Post Office (Trudeau, New York), 1917; American Management Association's Maintenance Office Building
This is a frame building with a distinctive Elizabethan Revival hooded gable, asphalt roof and wood shingle siding.
This little building has had almost as peripatetic a life as Little Red. It was built in 1892-93 as a library added to the original Main Building by the brother and sister of Charles Francis Kahnweiler, as a memorial to him. 1 It was added as a northeast wing — the fifth such addition on the original Main Building.
Dr. Trudeau wrote about its first move: "When the Main Building was being replaced in 1896, the small wooden wing of the old building containing the Library, being a memorial, [was] preserved, moved to [the road opposite the Main Building], built up in rough stone and . . . transformed into an attractive and permanent separate structure, devoted to the literary needs of the patients." 2
On October 22, 1896, W. L. Coulter, who was Superintendent for the architects Renwick, Aspinwall and Owen of New York on this construction project, approved Branch and Callanan's bill of September 3 for $350 on the contract for the library. 3
Through the efforts of Dr. Lawrason Brown, a post office called Trudeau, New York was established at the Sanitarium in 1904. Marguerite Armstrong described the first location: "Mail boxes were first placed in the hall windows of the tiny executive office in the Administration building (a great inconvenience), but were later removed to the Kahnweiler Building." 4
When the new Mellon Memorial Library was completed in 1905, part of the Kahnweiler building was partitioned for the use of the Trudeau Post Office. The rear or bay portion facing east was used as the office of The Journal of the Outdoor Life, a magazine for patients established by Dr. Lawrason Brown in 1904. 5
Late in 1905, Kahnweiler was moved some thirty feet back from the road, the stone cladding was taken off, and clapboard underneath was exposed. Two of seven laborers photographed doing the work were black men. Marguerite Armstrong wrote that a group of patients found pleasure as "sidewalk superintendents" watching the work; William Scopes may have been one of those patients. Walls were shingled and painted a light color, an entry porch was added on the front, and a sitting-out (or perhaps a "working-out") porch with glass screens was added to the south side. With these changes, the little Queen Anne structure took on a Colonial Revival aspect, similar to the Robins and Phoenix cottagers.
In 1910 The Journal of the Outdoor Life was sold to the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, headquartered in New York, for which it became the official organ, published until 1935.
In 1917 the location of the then Post Office was chosen as the site for the memorial statue to Dr. Trudeau, and the Kahnweiler Building was moved again, to its present spot, and joined to the Service Building. It was in a "central and therefore convenient location," but when its porches were removed, it appeared rather small and plain, and lost some of its appeal. 6 It was still operating in June of 1943.
Source:
- Mary B. Hotaling, Draft nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, January 1993.
- National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
Comments
Footnotes
1. ELT, 239; Armstrong #5, 75 & 107; and Armstrong #4, 121+.
2. ELT, "Twelfth Annual Report," in Armstrong #5: 35 & 77.
3. Armstrong #4-1: 134-35.
4. Armstrong #4-1: 121+.
5. Armstrong #5: 51, 87 & 107.
6. "Thirty-third Annual Report," Armstrong #6: 15; #4-1 133.
