Smoke Signals, 2489 Main St., Lake Placid (Provided photo — Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society)

LAKE PLACID — There’s a lot of history at 2489 Main St., the current site of Smoke Signals restaurant, which had once been an ice cream shop, hardware store and Catholic church. Photos of some of these buildings are part of a Main Street exhibit at the Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society’s History Museum in the old train station on Station Street.

St. Agnes Church was first constructed in 1896 on the site of Smoke Signals, with the first Mass held there on April 28 the same year by the Rev. John J. Waters, who purchased the land in 1895 for $1,000 from the Shea Brothers. St. Agnes officially became a parish on Aug. 28, 1900.

In 1904, land for the new St. Agnes Church on Saranac Avenue was purchased to accommodate a growing congregation, and the building was soon constructed. The first Mass was celebrated in the Signal Hill structure on Easter Sunday, April 23, 1905. By the early 1920s, the church could not handle the growing number of parishioners, and a larger building was needed. Construction of the current brick building began in 1924, with ground being broken on June 2. Mass was first held in the new church on Easter Sunday, April 2, 1925, and it was officially dedicated on Aug. 16, 1925.

In the meantime, the Smoke Signals building has been altered many times over the years and looks nothing like it did in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

Frank Walton purchased the former church in 1906 — cutting off the steeple — and turned it into a hardware store. Several additions had been built onto the structure, but most of the structure remained looking like the old church until 2004.

The Lake Placid Hardware store was in the building that now houses Smoke Signals restaurant in Lake Placid. (Provided photo — Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society)

By 1940, the building had transitioned into the Lake Placid Hardware Store. The basic outline of the church was still visible. The steeple was gone, but the steeple annex remained part of the building. The Perkins family owned the hardware store until 1988.

Ben and Jerry’s took over the structure in 2004. The steeple annex was removed at this point, and the original outline of St. Agnes was hardly identifiable. A high-end gifts and furnishings store, Alpine Meadow, was also located here during that time.

By 2013, the building was completely transformed into Smoke Signals and bore no resemblance to its original structure. The grand opening for the restaurant was held on May 12 of that year.

The Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society offers a Historical Walking Tour of Lake Placid that includes Smoke Signals and the current St. Agnes Church, where a steeple was finally added after almost 100 years. (It had been part of the original architectural drawings but was not installed until Monday, June 17, 2024.) Download a PDF of the historic walking tour at www.lakeplacidhistory.org/the-walking-tour-edited-9-2022/.

(Information for this story was from the Lake Placid News archives, the Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society Historic Walking Tour and a slide show, “Main Street, Lake Placid: An architectural and historic survey,” by Mary MacKenzie, Lee Manchester and Janet Null.)

The old St. Agnes Church was previously the building that now houses Smoke Signals restaurant in Lake Placid. It has been altered many times over the years. (Provided photo — Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society)