Railroad Station: Union Station, Union St. between Fulton St. and Broadway, for New York Central System, Boston & Maine R.R., Delaware & Hudson R.R., and Rutland R.R.
Bus Stations: 31 State St. for Greyhound Lines, Wagar Motor Coach, Hoosick Valley Coach, Taconic Valley, Miller Bus, Interstate Busses, and Boston & Maine Lines; Union Station for L.B.K. and Vermont Transit Lines.
Airport: S. city line; no scheduled service; local sight-seeing flights.
Busses: Fare 5¢ and 10¢.
Taxis: 25¢ minimum, zone system.
Accommodations: 9 hotels; tourist homes.
Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, 43 Fourth St.; Troy Automobile Club, Hendrick Hudson Hotel, Broadway and Second St.
Radio Stations: WHAZ (1300kc.); WTRY (950 kc.).
Motion Picture Houses: 9.
Baseball: Semiprofessional at Laureate Grounds, River St. and Glen Ave.; New York State League, 115th St. and 7th Ave.
Golf: Frear Park, Oakwood and Frear Aves., 9 holes, greens fee 50¢; Sat., Sun., and holidays $1.
Tennis: City parks, free.
Swimming: Prospect Park, June–Sept., 10¢; children free mornings only.
TROY (34 alt., 70,117 pop.) stretches for seven miles along the eastern bank of the Hudson at the head of river navigation, opposite the junction with the Barge Canal. The mass of nondescript brick and wood buildings at the city’s southern line gives way to a section of more stately homes of the Victorian era, Sage Park, public buildings, and the business district. Beyond are the high, confining walls of the shirt factories, and north of them is the residential section of old Lansingburgh.
In the downtown area the streets run directly north-south and east-west, with the east-west thoroughfares south of Liberty Street bearing consecutively the names of the Presidents from Washington to Polk, intercepted only by Ida Street, named for Mount Ida, the 360-foot buttress of Cambrian rock and glacial clay that is the center of the municipal Prospect Park, and Canal Avenue on the south bank of the Poestenkill. Eastward, modern residential sections stretch toward the Taconic hills in a maze of short streets. Almost hidden by the bulk of factory walls are the Poestenkill and Wynantskill, swift streams that were the first sources of power in the community.
Troy is an industrial, educational, and shopping center. There are 73 miles of paved streets, a $4,000,000 gravity water supply system, and a mile of new concrete docks bordering the 150-year-old harbor. Six public parks totaling 220 acres contain athletic fields, a golf course, and swimming pools. Besides its public school system, the city has Russell Sage College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Emma Willard School.
In 1609 a longboat from Henry Hudson’s Half Moon explored north as far as the site of Troy. The crew found the flatland at the head of navigation planted in corn and beans, the cornstalks acting as poles for the bean vines. Pa-an-pa-ack, the Indian name of the site, has been translated as field of standing corn. The site was part of the patroonship granted to Kiliaen Van Rensselaer by the Dutch West India Company.
For 120 years Troy existed as the meadowland of stolid Dutch farmers, a green ribbon within sound of the Mohawk’s falls and backed by the soft swellings of the Berkshires. In 1785 the greater part of the city site lay in three farms owned by the descendants of Derick Vanderheyden. The rent demanded by the Van Rensselaers was three bushels and three pecks of wheat and three fat hens or capons annually. The Lansings, northerly neighbors and relatives of the Vanderheydens, laid out their land in building lots shortly before the Revolution and established the village of Lansingburgh, first known as New City. A lively trade sprang up between Albany and the Lansings’ settlers in the years following Burgoyne’s defeat.
After the Revolution Benjamin Thurber purchased a lot at the intersection of the river road and the Hoosick road and opened a general store, which he called the Bunch of Grapes. Captain Stephen Ashley leased the Matthias Vanderheyden home which stood at what is now the corner of Division and River Streets, and turned it into a tavern. Jacob D. Vanderheyden, owner of the middle farm, for a while opposed settlement was but finally persuaded to lay out his holding in building lots. The land was surveyed for a town site in 1786. Philadelphia, a city of regular squares, was adopted as a model, and, except for the curving of the river road, now River Street, the plan was followed. Vanderheyden insisted that the village carry his name, but the half dozen houses were popularly known as Ashley’s Ferry or Ferry Hook. The name Troy was adopted at a public meeting in Ashley’s Tavern on January 5, 1789. Jacob Vanderheyden, reconciled to town building, rebelled anew against the name, and for years gave his address as ‘Vanderheyden alias Troy.’
The townspeople were sober and intent, worshipping on Sundays even when there was but one man in the village who could make a prayer. In 1791, 64 Trojans took a step toward dominance of the area by subscribing 1,000 pounds toward construction of the Rensselaer County courthouse.
Bricks were first made in the locality in 1789; about the same year a dam and flume were built on the Poestenkill to operate the first paper mill in northern New York. Packet lines carried freight and passengers to New York City. In 1796 Troy was granted a post office, and in 1798 it was incorporated as a village. The Troy-Schenectady toll road, begun in 1802, provided a direct route from the West to the head of navigation on the Hudson and opened the Troy market to Palatine and Dutch farmers along the Mohawk. By 1806 Troy had a population of 3,200, including 80 free Negroes and 79 slaves.
The War of 1812 brought the settlement one of the largest arsenals of the United States, now the Watervliet Arsenal (see Tour 10), and immortalized Samuel Wilson, who supplied the soldiers quartered near by with what they called ‘Uncle Sam’s beef,’ as the original ‘Uncle Sam.’ War trade, the beginning of iron manufacture, the unbroken stream of New England emigrants passing through on their way west, stimulated growth; and in 1816 a city charter was granted by the State legislature.
During the next decade, three people moved to the city who became leaders in three Nation-wide movements. The era of Amos Eaton, Emma Willard, and Henry Burden was Troy’s golden age. Eaton, who spurred public interest in mechanical and scientific development, was appointed senior professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1824. Emma Willard, pioneer in liberal education for women, brought her school to Troy in 1821. Henry Burden, who came to Troy in 1822, by his inventions stimulated the city’s iron industry.
The first bell foundry in Troy began operations in 1825; the first stove-plates were manufactured in 1821. With the opening of the Erie and Champlain Canals began the smudged confusion of tugboats, barges, and cranes that still persists along the Troy water front. Charles Veasie and Orsamus Eaton opened coach shops that for years led the trade in these ornate vehicles. It was estimated in 1845 that 5,000 Eaton coaches were in use in North and South America. Troy’s population jumped from 5,264 in 1820 to 11,556 in 1830.
In the first months of 1838, hard on a national panic, the city subscribed to all the stock of the proposed Schenectady & Troy Railroad in the hope of becoming a railroad center. Constructed with the first H-section iron rails laid in the United States, and well ballasted, the road was completed in 1842 and was pronounced the most comfortable then in use. But it proved a financial failure, was sold, and later was merged with the New New York Central. Coachmaker Eaton tried his hand at passenger cars for the new road. They were clumsy in comparison with modern coaches but so much superior to those in use on the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad that the firm received orders for much of the equipment used on the dozen lines built in the State during the next decade.
In 1825 Mrs. Hannah Lord Montague, a Troy housewife, developed a detachable collar for men’s shirts; according to tradition she cut the dirty collars off her husband’s shirts to save herself the trouble of washing the entire garment, and thereby created a new industry. Ebenezer Brown first began the manufacture of detachable collars in 1829, and in 1834 Lyman Bennett opened the first successful collar factory. Further stimulus was given to the trade by the introduction of cuffs in 1845 and the sewing machine in 1852.
During the 1850’s Troy surged into national prominence as an industrial center, although it never passed its old rival, Albany, in size. Construction work on the canals and railroads drew the first contingents of Irish immigrants, and industries later attracted additional thousands of them. By 1860 the population was 39,235. The migrations that founded the city had pushed on 3,000 miles to the Pacific Ocean; iron products and ‘fancy clothes’ followed, and Troy supplied both. The boom period was intensified by the Civil War. Across the river in Watervliet the arsenal turned out ammunition and guns for the Union Armies, giving employment to hundreds of men. Henry Burden’s horseshoe machine clanked out footwear for cavalry and artillery mounts at the rate of 60 a minute. The regiment of the Second New York Volunteers, which left the city in May 1861, was the first to land on Virginia soil during the war. Workmen in local mills turned out plates for the Monitor. Troy troops, entrenched at Fortress Monroe, watched the Monitor battle the Merrimac off the Virginia coast on March 9, 1862.
During the Civil War women drawn into the laundry and collar industries of the city developed their own union. In 1868 the powerful Collar Laundry Workers of Troy gave $1,000 to the Troy Iron Moulders Association and $800 to striking bricklayers in New York City. Coupled with this, they forced increases in their own wages from $2–$3 to $12–$14 a week. In 1869, however, a strike split the union members into factions and the movement disintegrated.
Visiting Europe in 1864, Horatio Winslow purchased the rights to manufacture and sell Bessemer steel in the United States and began production at his company’s Troy works. Introduction of the metal brought a new order of mass haulage by rail, and Troy became the steel center of the country. Its supremacy was doomed, however, when in 1873 Andrew Carnegie set up a steel mill 12 miles from Pittsburgh.
Trade with the North Country and the establishment of knitting mills brought hundreds of French-Canadian families to Troy between 1860 and 1910. Italians settled in the city during the same period, supplying the labor for railroad construction and municipal improvements. After the expansion of 1901, when Lansingburgh was added to the city under a second-class charter, population swept to a peak of 76,000.
The city has lost its nineteenth-century pre-eminence in the manufacture of steel, wrought-iron, and foundry products; and changed conditions of transportation have diverted much of its jobbing trade. But Troy is still an important producer of valves, fire hydrants, and engineering and surveying instruments, as well as collars and shirts, and produces a substantial volume of women’s wear.
POINTS OF INTEREST
1. The BETSY HART HOUSE (private), 59 Second St., was built in 1827 by Richard P. Hart, a railroad magnate and merchant of the mid-nineteenth century, whose wife, Betsy, was said at her death in 1886 to have been the richest woman in America. The two-story-and-attic house with its marble front is an excellent example of Georgian Colonial architecture. The arched entrance and window trim are enriched with fine details, and the wrought-iron balustrade, newels, and fence are elaborate.
2. The FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, SE. corner of Congress and First Sts., a stuccoed brick building with a stone foundation, erected in 1836, resembles a Greek temple with its Doric pedimented portico, heavy pilasters, and cornice. The congregation, organized in 1791, is the oldest in Troy.
3. RUSSELL SAGE COLLEGE, NW. corner of Ferry and Second Sts., an institution of higher learning for women, was organized in 1916 through the generosity of Mrs. Russell Sage. The three stone-and-brick college buildings in Sage Park were formerly occupied by the Emma Willard School; the remaining buildings are near by. The curriculum includes four-year courses in the arts and sciences, nursing, business education, home economics, and physical education, leading to the degrees of A.B. and B.S. Enrollment is approximately 700. On the campus, facing Second Street, a bronze statue of Emma Willard marks the site of the Troy Female Seminary, predecessor of the Emma Willard School.
4. The HART MEMORIAL LIBRARY (open, winter, 9–9 weekdays; summer, 9–6 Mon.–Thurs., 9–9 Fri., 9–12 Sat.), NE. corner of Second and Ferry Sts., headquarters of the Troy public library system, was erected in 1897 by Mary Lane Hart as a memorial to her husband, W.H. Hart. The building, a two-story-and-basement marble structure, is suggestive of an Italian palace, with two arched main entrances, pilastered and triple-arched front windows, and five-arched loggia on the second floor of the Ferry Street side. The ornamentation is Italian Renaissance.
5. The FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, Third St. between Congress and State Sts., erected in 1846, is a bulky red brick building with a massive white wood portico of six Greek Ionic columns and a pediment. From the roof rises a stepped tower and a tall, slender spire. The First Particular Baptist Church of the village of Troy, as the society was called, was the second church organization in the community. Founded in 1795, it erected its first church building in 1805 on land donated by Jacob D. Vanderheyden in 1796. In 1824 there was installed in its tower the first town clock which was guaranteed ‘to be seen from more than 1,000 windows . . . to strike a handsome blow, and to keep perfect time . . . and be an ornament for the church and city.’
6. ST. PAUL’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NE. corner of State and Third Sts., erected in 1827, the oldest church structure in the city, is built of limestone with wood trim. The style is simple English Gothic. The severe plainness of the pointed arch windows contrasts with the intricate cut woodwork of the upper portion of the tower over the main entrance.
7. The CLUETT PEABODY PLANT (open 9–2:30 Mon–Fri., guides), 433–71 River St., is the largest shirt factory in the world. The main factory is a six- and nine-story modern building occupying an entire city block. Bleaching operations are carried on across the river near Waterford. The plant has 3,700 employees, 80 per cent of whom are women. The plant contains a COLLAR MUSEUM showing various types from the first ‘Troy Made’ to the latest styles; all sorts of bizarre collars made in odd shapes and from various materials collected from all corners of the globe; and collars autographed by famous men, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, ex-Presidents Hoover, Coolidge, and Taft, Admiral Dewey, and Bob Fitzsimmons.
KEY FOR TROY MAP
1. Betsy Hart House 2. First Presbyterian Church 3. Russell Sage College 4. Hart Memorial Library 5. First Baptist Church 6. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church 7. Cluett Peabody Plant 8. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 9. St. Joseph’s Seminary 10. Emma Willard School 11. Belding House 12. Troy Orphan Asylum 13. Ludlow Valve Plant 14. Poor & Co. (Rail Joint) Plant 15. Hudson Valley Fuel Coke Plant 16. Burden Iron Plant 17. Troy Furnace Plant 18. Oakwood Cemetery 19. Wendell-Lansing House
8. RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE, Sage Ave. between Eighth and Fifteenth Sts., founded in 1824, is the first college of science and civil engineering now in existence to be established in an English-speaking country. It offers four-year courses in the engineering and scientific fields and in architecture and business administration. Graduate courses lead to master’s and doctor’s degrees.
The institute was founded by Stephen Van Rensselaer ‘for the purpose of instructing persons in the application of science to the common purposes of life.’ Amos Eaton (1776–1842), pioneer in American scientific research and education, was appointed senior professor. A series of lectures on science that he delivered before the State legislature in 1818 at the request of Governor De Witt Clinton had won him the patronage of Stephen Van Rensselaer. In 1820 he made the first geological survey in New York, following the route of the Erie Canal, and created an interest that led to the establishment of the State Geological Survey in 1836.
The Broadway Approach, an impressive stone stairway constructed on the site of the old main building of the institute, offers a direct approach from the center of the city to the campus on the hill. The main buildings, principally laboratories, extend in an irregular line up the steep hillside. Monumental in appearance, they are constructed of Harvard brick and Indiana limestone in English Georgian style. The Palmer Chamberlaine Ricketts Building, completed in 1935 and named for the man who was president of the institute from 1901 to 1934, houses the newer departments of aeronautical, chemical, and metallurgical engineering.
9. ST. JOSEPH’S SEMINARY, Eighth St. between Sage and College Aves., now the Provincial House and Novitiate of the Sisters of St. Joseph, occupies the plot of ground contiguous to the R.P.I. campus. The Seminary and the chapel form a ‘T’ in plan. Built in 1856 of brick, the Seminary, Romanesque Revival in style with Gothic towers, is now finished in dark, rough-cast stucco. Two of the four original Gothic wood spires on the square central towers remain, together with the two pinnacled towers on the end wings.
The CHAPEL (open), built in 1933, is constructed of seam-faced granite with cast-stone trim in the English Gothic style. The interior walls, columns, and altars are of varied rich marble, with effective lighting and decorations.
10 The EMMA WILLARD SCHOOL, Pawling and Elm Grove Aves., an exclusive college preparatory school for girls, one of the oldest of its kind in the country, occupies a secluded, carefully landscaped campus on the brow of a hill. The buildings were made possible largely by a gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, an alumna of the school. Built of Schoharie limestone, they are English Collegiate Gothic (Tudor and Early English Renaissance) in style. Open tracery and gargoyles distinguish the octagonal main tower. The gymnasium has an impressive clock tower.
11. The BELDING HOUSE (private), 9 Brunswick Road, is a fine example of the Greek Revival style. The pedimented portico with four fluted Ionic columns overlooks the mill pond across the road. The flush boarding of the main block is broken by floor-length parlor windows and on the left by an unusually squat side-lighted door surmounted by a wide transom. On each side are clapboarded wings with end chimneys. The interior retains its original doors, trim, and marble mantels. The house was erected in the late 1830’s by Dennis Belding, Troy butcher, who owned the farm site from 1834 to 1854.
12. The TROY ORPHAN ASYLUM (open by appointment), SW. corner of Spring and Pawling Aves., is a private institution providing individual care for its inmates. The group of brick buildings in the Victorian Gothic style houses the dormitory, training quarters, recreational unit, chapel, hospital, power house, and barns. The institution is supported by voluntary contributions; admission is open to children of all sects from birth to 16 years of age.
13. The LUDLOW VALVE PLANT (open 9–5 Mon.–Fri.; guides), W. end of Adams St., makes giant gate valves.
14. The POOR & CO. (RAIL JOINT) PLANT (not open to public), Burden Ave. at entrance to the Troy-Menands bridge, manufactures insulated joints for block signals. The plant can turn a 900-pound steel billet into the finished product in one minute.
15. The HUDSON VALLEY FUEL COKE PLANT (not open to public), foot of Cross St., has an annual output of 375,000 tons of coke and 5,000,-000,000 cubic feet of gas. Other products include coal tar, ammonium sulphate, phenol, and benzol, which are shipped to all parts of the country and to foreign lands.
16. The BURDEN IRON PLANT (abandoned), Main St. W. of First St., which manufactured horseshoes, rivets, and merchant iron, had its origin in a rolling and slitting mill erected in 1809 on the south bank of the Wynantskill. Under the leadership of Henry Burden (1791–1871), the plant was enlarged in 1822 and its products were diversified. In 1825 Burden patented a machine for turning out wrought-iron railroad spikes; in 1834 the machine was revamped to produce hookheaded spikes. In 1835 he patented a machine for producing horseshoes and won a monopoly for his company in supplying the cavalry and field artillery of the U.S. Army during the Mexican and Civil Wars. His rotary concentric squeezer for removing slag from puddled iron was hailed in 1840 as one of the most important advances in the history of iron manufacture.
17. The TROY FURNACE DIVISION of the Republic Steel Corp. (not open to public), beyond foot of Main St., W. of the Burden Plant, operates a blast furnace leased from the Hudson Valley Fuel Corporation. The magnetic ore used is shipped from Port Henry by Barge Canal and rail. Three carloads of stone from Albany County are used daily for flux. The furnace has an annual capacity of 150,000 tons.
18. OAKWOOD CEMETERY, E. end of 101st St., extends over the western slope of the hills on the northeastern border of Troy. The ROBERT ROSS MONUMENT, a heroic figure of Ross by J. Massey Rhind, was erected by the women of Troy, with the aid of Nation-wide contributions. Ross was martyred while defending the purity of the ballot at a city election on March 6, 1894. A State investigation and a trial focused the attention of the whole country on the political corruption of Troy at that time and on the lax election laws of the State of New York. Public opinion forced the passage of corrective measures culminating in the use of the Australian ballot.
The RUSSELL SAGE MONUMENT marks the grave of Russell Sage, (1816–1906), who was born in a covered wagon in Verona, New York, and came to Troy as a boy to serve as apprentice in his brother’s store. In 1837 he purchased the store and thereafter extended his activities into several commercial fields. In 1852, while serving as the district’s representative in Congress, he supported the movement to establish Mount Vernon as a national shrine.
The SAMUEL WILSON MONUMENT, a finely proportioned rough granite block, was dedicated by the Veterans of Foreign Wars in July 1936. Samuel Wilson (1766–1854) was a Troy brickmaker who early in the War of 1812 opened a slaughterhouse and sold meat to Elbert Anderson, Government contractor. Wilson’s beef and pork were shipped down the Hudson to the Army cantonment at Greenbush, each piece stamped ‘US—EA.’ Soldiers invented the story that the US (United States) stood for ‘Uncle Sam’ Wilson. The phrase caught the public fancy and was applied to other Government property.
19. The WENDELL–LANSING HOUSE (private), 405 Second Ave., was built about 1750 in the early Georgian Colonial style. The white two-story superstructure is of Holland brick; the foundations are of cut stone, with a riverside wall more than three feet thick, probably to withstand ice floes brought down by freshets. The interior has been modernized.
POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS
Watervliet Arsenal, 1 m.; Tomhannock Reservoir, 4 m. (see Tour 10). Van Alen Homestead and Lindenwald, 27.2 m. (see Tour 21). Saratoga Battlefield, 21.6 m. (see Tour 22).
