Help for the Baldwin House at St Luke’s

For years St Luke’s Church has been a landmark in the community, on the corner o f Main Street and Church Street.. Just before you head down the hill on Church Street towards the River..  The church’s membership has also been the caretaker of a building next to the church which is, in it’s own right, a landmark in the community… It’s called the Baldwin House and for years the first floor has been home to “The Budget Box” – run entirely by volunteers from the church and the community who provided an opportunity for people to find second hand clothing to wear and to purchase at discounted prices. All of the clothing having been donated to the Budget Box, the volunteers were able to provide a real service to the community with the resale of this clothing at very reduced costs to those in need.  If you head up a steep set of stairs, built before code required any specific rise and run of a staircase, you’ll find an old window that’s been boarded over to accommodate an addition to the building on the first floor, and further up, four rooms and a bathroom – very similar to a regular home – in the main section and another few rooms down an adjacent hallway.. Over the years, the church has never been able to formalize a use for the upstairs, save a few regular community group meetings..  For some reason, Church Architecture always works better if everything is actually connected…  Day Care for young children, for example, moved into the Parish Hall – to be connected to the action perhaps, the Church Offices – even though an entire floor would be available to the administrators – still in the Parish hall – and Even the Parish Hall – connected by a foyer to the Church itself during an upgrade to the facilities..   The Baldwin House – even with proposals from Vestry over the years to build a connector of some sort – has become disconnected from the day to day operations of St Lukes – The Parish Community continues to search for a suitable use for the building even while investing heavily in Electrical and other infrastructure upgrades to insure it’s well being… Tonight, St Luke’s holds a special community forum in their Parish Hall at 7pm to discuss possible uses for the Baldwin House –  Searching for perhaps an idea that could become the focus of the next 50 years for the Landmark which sits mostly idle, waiting for someone to give it back it’s life…  Leaders and The Community invited to St Luke’s Parish Hall at 7..  and if all goes well, perhaps begin writing the next chapter of Baldwin House History in Saranac Lake..

This entry was posted on October 4, 2012 at 12:15 pm and is filed under ! Local News, Slideshow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.