In the process, a specific building type, the "cure cottage", developed, built by residents seeking to capitalize on the town's fame, by physicians, and often by the patients themselves.

As the sanitorium grew, it would be supported at first by wealthy sportsmen that Trudeau had met at Paul Smith's, several of whom had built great camps on the nearby St. Regis Lakes.

The discovery that tuberculosis was contagious further contributed to Saranac Lake's importance as a cure center, as many other venues in the Adirondacks began to turn "consumptives" away.

He designed a house at 147 Park Avenue for Thomas Bailey Aldrich editor of the Atlantic Monthly in 1903 that wits dubbed "The Porcupine" because it had so many fine points.

Those of lesser means frequently brought family members who earned a living by working in other sanatoria, or creating their own cure settings in rented accommodations.

When Norway was overrun by the Nazis early in World War II, many Norwegian merchant seamen who were at sea at the time chose to come to the United States; some of those were found to have tuberculosis, and perhaps as many as 500 came to live in Saranac Lake.

They nearly all left after the war, but 16 had died, and are buried in a special section of Pine Ridge Cemetery; their graves are tended by prisoners at nearby Camp Gabriels, funded by an annual payment from the Norwegian government.