Albany, New York

“ The way I took through Muitzeskill and Castleton to Greenbush, is marked with New York and Albany guide posts, but none of the old mile-stones adorn its path.
Ever since Rhinebeck the Catskills have been marching along the western horizon, and while generally the river is too far away to be a part of the picture, the country, the beautiful country, makes one continually wonder, not that the painters of a past generation grew to love the region and to revel in its seductive delights, but rather that they could ever stop its delineation. ”

“ Albany is the legislative capital of New York. It is a handsome city, and one of the oldest in the Union. Most of the houses are built of wood, which, when tastefully painted (not often the case) have rather a pleasing appearance. The situation of this city is advantageous, both from the direct communication which it enjoys with the Atlantic, by means of sloops and schooners, and the large tract of back country which it commands. A trade with Canada is established by means of the Erie and Hudson canal. ”

“ When the sky is lowering, they usually take in sail going along this part of the river.
About four o’clock in the morning of the fourth of July we reached Albany, the place of our destination, one hundred and sixty miles distant from New York.
Albany is a city, and contains about eleven hundred houses; the number however is increasing fast, particularly since the removal of the state government from New York. In the old part of the town the streets are very narrow and the houses are frightful ”

“ How strange the spectacle in free America—how fruitless and disheartening the struggle it portends—when legislation is invoked at Albany, in the great State of New York, to keep up a fictitious price of labor! ”

“ Albany is well equipped with public school facilities. There were in 1920, 23 grammar school buildings and a high school building costing $1,000,000. There are housed in these buildings over 12,000 people. In addition to the public schools there are many well-equipped private and parochial schools. In the city are 12 libraries, not including the State Library, which contains over 525,000 books. There are 75 churches, some of them of great architectural merit. ”

“ Traversing New York, over rough roads, before the days of canals and railroads, in the heavy, lumbering stage coach that took five or six days and nights, and, in muddy seasons, six days and seven nights of continuous travel, to go from Albany to Buffalo, made a strenuous life, but Weed's devotion to party, and fidelity to men and principles, sent him on his way with something of the freshness of boyhood still shining on his face. ”

“ The capital of the Empire State, with its population of such magnitude that it exceeds that of more than twenty important foreign nations, is Albany, which was founded by the Dutch in 1623, and which has since earned for itself the title of the "Edinburgh of America." Compared with New York City it is dwarfed in point of population and commercial importance. ”

“ In 1686, Albany received a city charter from Governor Dongan, providing for an elected council and a mayor to be appointed by the governor. The first mayor, Peter Schuyler, continued to serve until 1694. The settlement continued to be inhabited mainly by the Dutch, but the increase in the English population is indicated by the erection of an English church in 1714. ”

“ The Swedish naturalist, Kalm, visited Albany in 1749. He has left to us a very full account of Albany food and fashions of serving at that time. He found the Albanians faring as did their great grandfathers in the Netherlands, who were sneeringly called “milk and cheese men,” and he found them rasping their cheese as had their far-away forbears in Holland, and as do their descendants in Holland to this day. He writes thus:—
“The inhabitants of Albany are much more sparing than the English. ”

“ Albany is a terminus of the New York Central & Hudson River, the Delaware & Hudson and the West Shore railways, and is also served by the Boston & Maine railway, by the Erie and Champlain canals (being a terminus of each) , by steamboat lines on the Hudson river and by several inter-urban electric railways connecting with neighbouring cities.
Albany is attractively situated on a series of hills rising sharply from the river. The older portions of the city are reminiscent of Dutch colonial days, and some fine specimens of the Dutch and later colonial architecture are still standing. ”

“ Albany has received more permanent and evident advantages from the canals than any other place in the state. Since 1825, the population has increased from fifteen thousand nine hundred and seventy-one to 33,627. The first settlement at Albany was made about 1614, when a stockade was built on a spot just below the steam-boat dock. The charter of the city was granted in 1686, a few months before that of New York. The city and township are a mile in breadth, and extend thirteen miles along the river. The neighborhood of Albany abounds in pleasant villages. ”

“ After peace was again established and the routine of business taken up, Albany became the centre of the entire trade of Western New York.
RIVER STREET, TROY, NEW YORK.
Fulton's steamboats began to run between Albany and New York as early as 1809, and this commercial activity and contact with the world gave an impulse to the city which has made itself felt all along the Hudson. Since then it has grown rapidly, and has in [131] its steady advancement an influential future to which its citizens may look forward with pardonable pride. ”

“ During the early days Albany held high rank among American settlements. As a center of trade and civilization it rivalled Jamestown, Manhattan and Quebec. In 1618 the Dutch negotiated here the first treaty with the Iroquois, which tended to preserve friendly relations with the Indians for more than a century to come.
The territory of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, the most celebrated of Indian confederations, extended from Albany to Buffalo, that is, over just the country through which the New York Central runs. ”

“ It is no mere figure of speech to call New York the Empire State; and many of the laws most directly and immediately affecting the interests of its citizens are passed at Albany, and not at Washington. In fact, there is at Albany a little home rule parliament which presides over the destinies of a commonwealth more populous than any one of two thirds of the kingdoms of Europe, and one which, in point of wealth, material prosperity, variety of interests, extent of territory, and capacity for expansion, can fairly be said to rank next to the powers of the first class. ”

“ Manufacturing interests in Albany have increased considerably during the last ten years. The most important industries now include iron, wood, and brass manufactures; printing and engraving; shirt, collar, and cuff manufactures; manufactures of clothing, caps, and knit goods; brewing; tobacco and cigar manufactures; and carriage and wagon building.
Within the city are about 28 miles of street railways, and electric lines connect also with towns some distance from Albany. ”

“ Power came from their great ability and high purpose.
The Albany Regency was destined to continue many years, and to number among its members men of character and great influence. Roger Skinner, a United States district judge, was an early member of it; so were Edwin Croswell of the Albany Argus, and Benjamin Knower, the state treasurer. At a later day came John A. Dix, Azariah C. Flagg, Silas Wright, and Charles E. Dudley. In his autobiography, Thurlow Weed says he "had never known a body of men who possessed so much power and used it so well." ”

“ Van Rensselaer, doubtless, informed of the great advantages of Albany, as the great rendezvous of the Indians to market their furs and near the confluence of the two most important rivers of New York, instructed his agents to obtain title from the Indians and he succeeded in procuring a princely estate along the Hudson river above and below Albany, a distance of twenty-four miles and extending east and west forty-eight miles—a territory ample for a kingdom—greater than the area of North Holland and very little less than that of South Holland. ”

“ From the deacons’ records of the Dutch Reformed Church at Albany we catch occasional hints of the dress of the children of the Dutch colonists. There was no poor-house, and few poor; but since the church occasionally helped worthy folk who were not rich, we find the deacons in 1665 and 1666 paying for blue linen for schorteldoecykers, or aprons, for Albany kindeken ”

“ The city has 11 parks, comprising 402 acres; the most notable is Washington Park, which contains two well known statues—one of Robert Burns, by Charles Caverley, and the bronze and rock fountain, "Moses at the Rock of Horeb," by J. Massey Rhind. The city's filtration system is of special interest to engineers; it occupies 20 acres, has eight filter beds, and filters 15,000,000 gallons of water daily.
Albany's key position with respect to New York, Boston and Buffalo ensured its commercial development. ”

“ I do not think that children were as rigid church attendants in New York as in New England. In 1696, in Albany, we find this injunction: “ye Constables in eache warde to take thought in attending at ye church to hender such children as Profane ye Sabbath;” and we know that Albany boys and girls were complained of for coasting down hill on [Pg 265] Sunday,—which enormity would have been simply impossible in New England, except in an isolated outburst of Adamic depravity. ”

“ From one bushel they get twelve sometimes; if the soil be good, they get twenty bushels. If their crop amounts only to ten bushels from one, they think it very trifling. The inhabitants of the country round Albany, are Dutch and Germans. The Germans live in several great villages, and sow great [246] quantities of wheat, which is brought to Albany; and from thence they send many yachts laden with flour to New York. The wheat-flour from Albany is reckoned the best in all North America, except that from Sopus or King’s Town, a place between Albany and New York. ”

“ The earliest owner of this region that I find mentioned in local histories was Henry Pawling, who died in 1695. His heirs sold the property in May, 1701, to Dr. Samuel Staats, of New York City, and another. This was the son of Major Abram Staats, of Albany, who figured54 largely in the early history of Columbia County. The only man of note living here during Revolutionary days was Major John Pawling, a friend of Washington and an active patriot. His stone house, built in 1761, still stands on the Post Road. ”

“ In the autumn he succeeded in securing an engagement on moderate terms at the theatre in Albany, then under the management of a shrewd, capable, but eccentric Dutchman, Charles Gilfert. He was to play leading parts in the stock company, and second parts to stars. Albany, as the capital of the State of New York, during the theatrical season was thronged with cultivated and distinguished people, and was an excellent place for a dramatic aspirant to achieve and extend a reputation. ”

“ They returned to New York, and I continued my journey with the Lowells, part of the way by the Hudson, and the rest by railway; but it rained terrifically, and in our transit from one mode of conveyance to the other we, as well as our carpet-bags, got wet through. Drenched, and amid pouring rain which rushed in torrents through the streets of Albany, we arrived at our hotel, where they refused to receive us. The agricultural fair was to be held in two days in the city, and every room was engaged by people coming to the fair. ”

“ The greater part of the merchants at Albany have extensive estates in the country, and a great deal of wood. If their estates have a little brook, they do not fail to erect a saw-mill upon it for sawing boards and planks, with which commodity many yachts go during the whole summer to New York, having scarce any other lading than boards.
Many people at Albany make the wampum of the Indians, which is their ornament and their money, by grinding some kinds of shells and muscles; this is a considerable profit to the inhabitants. ”

“ One sold in Albany in 1667 to William Brouwer was worth ten guilders. Parson Chandler as late as 1755 said the beds in Albany were simply wooden boxes, each with feather-bed, undersheet, and blanket cover. The kermis bed, on which the Labadist fathers slept in Brooklyn, was a pallet bed. Another bedstead often named was the trecke-bedde, or the sloep-banck ap rollen, which, as its name implies, was on rollers. It was a trundle-bed, and in the daytime was rolled under a high-post bedstead, if there were one in the room, and concealed by the valance of calico or chiney. ”

“ These sober Albany citizens drank up a pipe of wine, and smoked many pounds of tobacco. They broke hundreds of pipes and all the decanters and glasses in the house, and wound up by burning [Pg 300] all their funeral scarfs in a heap in the fireplace.
In Albany the expense, as well as the rioting, of funerals seems to have reached a climax. ”

“ This house is just hard to heat on a windy day.”
“My room is like an icehouse,” said Alice. “My fingers got practically stiff while I was dressing.”
“We’ll hope that the house in Albany is easier to heat,” said Mrs. Roosevelt.
“I don’t want to move to Albany,” Ethel whimpered. “I don’t want to leave my puppies and my pony.”
“Silly!” scorned young Ted, who had stood a little aloof from all the excitement over the goldfish, as he usually did from things he considered childish. “You should be proud to go to Albany, Father’s going to be governor of New York.” ”