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Centennial Site
Aiden Lair
Minerva, N.Y.Stop-over for Roosevelt on his famous
"Midnight Ride to the Presidency"The Revitalization Of Aiden Lair
By Sterling Goodspeed
Bob Morrison is going into the family business. In the process he'll be reconstructing history.
Bob's ambitious plan to reopen Aiden Lair Lodge near Minerva is more than just a construction project aimed at renovating a historic Adirondack lodge. The restoration, when complete, will also memorialize a landmark where for a few hours some 95 years ago, Bob's grandfather, Mike Cronin, crossed paths with a president.
On a road now paved and well traveled by mini vans and 4x4s, Bob Morrison and a group of volunteers are stabilizing the lodge, which replaced the original structure when it burned to the ground in 1914.
On the same road, Mike Cronin loaded Teddy Roosevelt onto a buckboard drawn by two horses to embark on the third and final leg of a perilous nighttime ride from the Adirondack High Peaks to the North Creek train station. At North Creek, Roosevelt would learn what Bob Morrison's grandfather had known for the whole ride but had kept to himself, that President McKinley had succumbed to the wounds inflicted by the attack of a would-be assassin, making Roosevelt the president of the United States.
The lodge, a 6,000-square-foot structure, has been closed since the early 1960s. Under increasing disrepair and the victim of repeated acts of vandalism, the lodge had become a shadow of its former self. It was not likely that it could have withstood another harsh, Adirondack winter, not to mention housing wilderness guests as a "haven of rest."
Enter Bob Morrison who in late 1995 acquired title to the structure.
The first task for Morrison was to stabilize the giant structure. This part of the process has included the boarding up of windows throughout the building as well as roof repair, according to Morrison.
On the weekend of Sept. 27-29, more than a dozen volunteers joined in the stabilization effort. In addition to readying the structure for winter, the volunteers removed a failing front porch area and began efforts to clean broken glass from the interior.
Morrison knows that he has his work cut out for him. A flyer promoting the first work day describes the project as, "several lifetimes worth of renovation."
Despite the work ahead, Morrison hopes to open as a hotel and restaurant in "a couple of years."
Next week as diners at the annual fund raising dinner for the North Creek Train Station gather, they will honor the three buckboard drivers who delivered Roosevelt to the train station, David Hunter, Orin Kellogg and Mike Cronin.
As for the final driver, Bob Morrison is building his own monument.