(Photo — Lake Placid -North Elba Historical Society)

Over the past few weeks, some new postcards from the Stedman and Moses Collection of glass plate negatives have been circulating around town. If you’ve not seen them yet, they are included as part of this article.

These postcards were sent out with our annual appeal mailing initially because they were just very cool pictures. Second and more importantly, we needed your help determining the locations of these images. It seems our astute public has come through!

The first postcard shows a lovely winter image of a church. A large evergreen tree stands in front of the church adorned in lights and garland of sorts. Ghostly images of parishioners can be seen leaving the church building. Recently, someone stopped into the Historical Society office and offered that this church was St. Hubert’s Episcopal Church. Could this be true?

Here is what a little further research found. According to Mary MacKenzie’s book “The Plains of Abraham,” “St. Eustace Church had its beginnings in 1894. In that year the first Episcopal service at Lake Placid was held in the parlors of the famous old Stevens House, as part of the mission of Rev. Walter W. Larom of Saranac Lake. Summer services continued for several years at various hotels.

With initial contributions of $7000, the construction of a little Gothic church, St. Eustace-by-the-Lakes, was begun on a spur of Signal Hill, overlooking Placid and Mirror Lakes. It was finished in the early spring of 1900.

Ski jumping in Lake Placid (Photo — Lake Placid -North Elba Historical Society)

St. Eustace-by-the-Lakes was a summer church. In winter, services were held at the rectory (now the home of Eastern Mountain Sports), at the Stevens House annex, the Parish House, Slater’s House (the present Raeoil building), and the Newman Opera House. It was decided to build a winter place of worship on Sentinel Road. Planned by architect William G. Distin of Saranac Lake, a charming Swiss-style church named St. Hubert’s was completed in 1902.

For close to a quarter century, St. Eustace-by-the-Lakes and St. Hubert’s served the parish well. St. Hubert’s was sold to the Pilgrim Holiness Church in the summer of 1924. The building eventually burned to the ground and was replaced by the present Pilgrim Holiness Church, of somewhat similar design.”

Please let us know if you agree that the site of the church picture is indeed St. Hubert’s Church.

The second image of is a ski jumper somewhere in downtown Lake Placid. Visible is an elevated ramp and jumper in mid-flight, a street with cars on it in front of the jumper, and houses in the background. Also visible in the far right background is what appears to be the Town Hall with the clock tower on the right side. That would put this picture somewhere around the Olympic Center, Oval, and Lake Placid High School.

The problem we had with this image, which was up on exhibit at The History Museum for two seasons without an accurate identification, is that the ski jump pictures we have from that location show a jump set much farther up on the hill to the right of the high school closer to where the 1980 Olympic Center was built. That jump would have been totally wrong with this picture as you can see the road and houses are much too close.

Speedskating oval, high school and ski jump in Lake Placid (Photo — Lake Placid -North Elba Historical Society)

The same person who identified the church image offered that this location is actually near where the 1932 Olympic Arena now stands. Up on the hill, that vantage point would give the elevation for the jump and the close proximity of the road and houses. In a town that over the years has been littered with both ski jumps and toboggan slides, this location seems plausible to us. Please let us know your thoughts.

We look forward to offering these and many other images on the repository newyorkheritage.org in the next month. Currently, the Northern New York Library Network (NNYLN) is transferring our PastPerfect museum data into the New York Heritage site. This site will host all our glass plate negative images. Links to this site will be available on our website at www.lakeplacidhistory.com and at the Lake Placid Public Library site at www.lakeplacidlibrary.org.

Have a wonderful holiday season and we look forward to seeing you in the New Year.