(FROM A PAINTING BY COL. TRUMBULL.)]
In 1797, “this antient and respectable city of Albany” (to quote the
courtly compliment of Washington) became the capital of the State. At
the close of the Revolution, New York had not yet determined its seat
of government. From 1777 to 1796 it peregrinated between Kingston,
Poughkeepsie, Albany and the city of New York. Not until the twentieth
session of the Legislature was the long dispute settled. The geographical
advantages of Albany finally carried the day, and for the last hundred
years the site of the frontier fort has been a political arena and an
illustrious seat of legislative and judicial power.
The Albany of “modern times,” as the phrase is understood in our American
life in which everything is new except human nature, has preserved few of
the ancient landmarks. The only souvenirs are the bronze tablets which
were devised at the Bicentennial in 1886, and which now designate the
historic sites in the city. If one, reverent of ancient and vanished
things, make pilgrimage to the tablet near the curb on the lower edge of
the Capitol Park (a block above the site of Fort Frederick), to the one
on the corner of Broadway and Steuben Street (the site of the northeast
gate), and to the one near the curb on lower Broadway two blocks from
State Street (the site of the southeast gate), he will define quite
accurately the girdle of the _palisadoes_ which protected old Albany.
[Illustration: STEPHEN VAN RENSSELAER.
(FROM A PAINTING BY EZRA AMES.)]
If he pass the memorial of the northeast gateway, a place of memorable
outgoings and incomings, and continue up Broadway about three quarters
of a mile, he will find a bronze tablet bearing the inscription:
“Opposite Van Rensselaer Manor-House. Erected 1765. Residence of the
Patroons. This spot is the site of the First Manor-House.” It was an
unpretentious one-story building of Holland brick, half fortress and
half dwelling. The final Manor-House, on the other side of the road, was
a structure of another fashion. At the time of its erection, 1765, it
was considered the handsomest residence in the colonies. Thither Stephen
Van Rensselaer brought his young bride, Catherine, daughter of Philip
Livingston, and his babe, who became General Van Rensselaer. It stood
amid the drooping elms of a large park and was decorated with a taste
and luxury startling to the period. In 1843 the building was enlarged
and enriched by the elder Upjohn. Once a stately mansion, the scene of
splendid hospitalities, it has shared the American fate of obstructive
antiquities in thriving towns. The railroad and the “lumber district”
crowded and finally strangled it. For several years it stood empty and
dismantled, and obviously had outlived both its beauty and its use. In
1893 the stone and timbers were transported to the Campus of Williams
College, where they were reconstructed into the Sigma Phi Society
building, which perpetuates a remote suggestion of the famous Manor-House.
[Illustration: VAN RENSSELAER MANOR-HOUSE, 1765.]
In the southern part of the city, on Clinton Street, is a bronze tablet
which designates the sister of the Manor-House, the Schuyler mansion,
built by the wife of General Philip Schuyler while he was in England
in 1760. This historic relic stands on a plateau above the street,
surrounded by a remnant of the original garden, but the broad avenue,
shaded by elms, which once gave approach to the mansion from the river,
is overgrown with houses. Though used at present as an orphan asylum
under the charge of the Order of St. Francis de Sales, it retains
substantially its original features. It is a dignified and spacious
house; not remarkable architecturally, but fragrant with history. Here
Burgoyne enjoyed his imprisonment. Here Washington, Lafayette, Count
de Rochambeau, Baron Steuben, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Carroll of
Carrollton, Aaron Burr, and other notable men of old were entertained.
Here Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler were married, December 14,
1780. Besides famous guests and weddings, its chief feature of historic
interest is the staircase, apropos of which, we quote from Mr. Marcus
Reynolds’s article on _The Colonial Buildings of Rensselaerswyck_ in _The
Architectural Record_ of 1895.
“Here is shown the famous tomahawk mark. In 1781 a plan was
made to capture General Schuyler and take him to Canada. A
party of tories, Canadians and Indians surrounded the house
for several days, and at length forced an entrance. The family
took refuge in the upper story, leaving behind in their haste
the youngest member of the family, Margaret Schuyler, afterward
the wife of the patroon. An elder sister going to rescue the
infant, was pursued by an Indian, who threw his tomahawk at her
as she fled up the stairs. The weapon entered the hand-rail
near the newel, and the mark is still shown, which would be
conclusive evidence if the same story were not told of the Glen
house in Schenectady, the only house unburnt in the massacre of
1690.”
[Illustration: SCHUYLER MANSION, 1760.]
With all its historic associations, Albany is not conspicuous for the
scenery it has furnished for the enchantments of poetry and romance;
still it is not altogether destitute of literary honors. Its colonial
life figures in the _Satanstoe_ of the great Fenimore Cooper and in
Harold Frederick’s _In the Valley_. The Normanskill, which tumbles into
the Hudson at the south end of the city, flows through the Vale of
Tawasentha, the scene of Longfellow’s Hiawatha. The hills and forests
about the city suggested many a delicate detail in the woodland rhythms
of Alfred Street, who made his home and burial-place in Albany. Its old
Dutch life with its sedate charm has been pictured by a living Albanian,
Leonard Kip; and probably the house still stands on Pearl Street or
Broadway, in which Henry James found the charming girl who stood for his
_Portrait of a Lady_.
On the east bank of the Hudson, in old Greene Bosch, opposite the city,
decays the dishonored ruin of Fort Crailo. The date, more or less
mythical, is 1642. It was the headquarters of General Abercrombie, and in
the garden back of the house a derisive British surgeon, Dr. Stackpole,
composed the immortal jingle of Yankee Doodle. If, in 1800, one stood
on the southeast corner of State and North Pearl Streets, opposite the
famous elm which Philip Livingston planted in 1735, his eye glancing up
the street to the north would be arrested by a picturesque relic of Dutch
Albany, the Vanderheyden Palace. Of course it has joined the departed,
but its ghost appears in Washington Irving’s _Bracebridge Hall_, and its
old weather-vane now swings above the porch of Sunnyside.
Some of the colonial structures were fine and famous in their day, but in
truth, in our American towns, imposing architecture is a thing of recent
date. Few cities give more favorable sites for architectural effects than
the three hills of Albany. It is not too much to say that the wealth
and taste of its citizens have conspired with its peculiar advantages
of position. The architecture of Albany has an exceptional value. The
City Hall, with its Romanesque doorways and majestic campanile, is a fine
specimen of the great Richardson. The Albany City Savings Bank, recently
constructed, is a classical gem, inadequately set, but cut by a master
hand. Its Corinthian monoliths and graceful dome satisfy the eye, and
the whole structure is a suggestive instance of what trade can do in the
interests of art.
[Illustration: WEST SIDE OF PEARL ST. FROM STATE ST. TO MAIDEN LANE, 1814.
1. VANDERHEYDEN HOUSE. 2. PRUYN HOUSE. 3. DR. WOODRUFF’S HOUSE.
(FROM A WATER-COLOR SKETCH BY JAMES EIGHTS.)]
The four examples of ecclesiastical architecture of more than local
interest are the North Dutch Church, an exceptionally good specimen of
the style which obtained in the beginning of the century; the Cathedral
of the Immaculate Conception, with its lofty double spires emphasized
by the site, and its spacious interior treated with taste and dignity;
St. Peter’s Church, with its noble lines, artistic windows and finely
detailed tower,—“one of the richest specimens of French Gothic in this
country”; and the Cathedral of All Saints, whose unfinished exterior
encloses columnar effects and a choir-vista which remind one of an
impressive mediæval interior and give the edifice a distinctive place
among the churches of America.
[Illustration: VIEW OF ALBANY, 1899.]
These architectural monuments, however, and the city itself are
overshadowed by the new Capitol. This massive structure, since its
corner-stone was laid on the 24th of June, 1871, has absorbed over twenty
millions of dollars. The enormous bulk, the difficult foundations,
the obdurate granite, the elaborate sculptures, the mistakes and
afterthoughts, sufficiently account for the money. The old Capitol,
which stood in front of the southeast corner, well-nigh could be tucked
into one of its great pavilions. The edifice is of such cost, size, and
architectural importance, that one discusses it as he might discuss
Strasburg Cathedral or the weather. Claiming simply the freedom of
personal impression, one may say that its weakest feature is the eastern
façade, which gives an inadequate suggestion of the size of the building
and moreover is dwarfed by the projecting mass and lofty ascent of the
gigantic stairway. He may also say that the Capitol declares its highest
points of architectural interest in the constructive and decorative
treatment of the interior.
The edifice has been built with the advantage of large ideas and
limitless resources, and the disadvantage of fluctuating ideas and a
succession of architects. These facts have left their imprint on the
structure but, with all that can be said in criticism of details and of
unused possibilities, it can fairly be ranked among the great buildings
of modern times.
As one approaches Albany, the colossal bulk of the Capitol thrust against
the sky seems to dominate the city as the great cathedrals of Europe
dominate the towns that have grown or decayed under their shadow. But
there are other structures and artistic things, representing the local
life, that are worthy of remark.
The State Museum of Natural History, in Geological Hall, a block below
the Capitol, vies with the State Library as a credit to the State and the
haunt of the student. It is one of the largest and best arranged museums
in the country, and its collection of the paleozoic rocks of New York,
which figure so largely in the nomenclature of geology, is a monument to
an eminent name in the scientific world, James Hall, late State Geologist.
[Illustration: JOHN V. L. PRUYN.]
Near the Capitol Park is the Albany Academy, in whose upper rooms Henry
and Ten Eyck demonstrated the electrical facts which were applied by
Morse. Up the hill, on the southwest corner of the city, stand the
pavilions of the new Hospital, built in 1899, and the Dudley Observatory,
of note in the stellar world. On Washington Avenue is Harmanus Bleecker
Hall, built from the fund held in trust for more than half a century
by Chancellor Pruyn and Judge Parker. On State Street opposite the
Capitol is the building of the Historical and Art Society, which, though
new-born, has already done valuable work in collecting sequestered relics
of history.
Under the elms in Washington Park are two fine bronzes: Caverley’s statue
of _Robert Burns_ and Rhind’s statue of _Moses at the Rock of Horeb_.
Fortunately one of the earliest and two of the noblest creations of the
sculptor Palmer are in the city of his home: his _Faith at the Cross_,
his _Livingston_, and his _Angel of the Resurrection_.
Albany the Old has become Albany the New. In many ways the new is more
energetic and more splendid than the old. The town is large enough
to show the characteristic features of our American life in its more
sensitive and vigorous centres, and small enough to retain local color
and distinctive traits. It is self-centred, believes in itself, and has
the instinct to discern and the habit of demanding the best things. It is
a place where the finest flavors of the old life linger in and temper the
broader spirit and more robust movement of the new life; a place that
perpetuates its traditions of social elegance and hospitality; a place,
too, that has been the cradle and home of men of commanding force, who
have contributed to the highest life of the nation and have left their
names on enduring structures of thought and art and economic organization.
The city lies at the intersection of the great thoroughfares of traffic
and travel in the richest and most densely populated portion of the
republic. Its facilities for production and distribution may give it
in the future an enormous industrial development. This fortune is not
unlikely, but, to those who estimate in large ways the values of life, it
cannot heighten the beauty or deepen the charm of the Albany of to-day.
[Illustration: SEAL OF ALBANY.]
[Illustration]
SARATOGA
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE GREAT WATERWAYS
BY ELLEN HARDIN WALWORTH
There are names which are more than famous—they have a distinct
individuality; their sound to the ear or appearance on the page arrests
attention, arouses interest, and presents a clear picture to the mind.
Such a name is Saratoga, with its romantic record, its picturesque
scenery, and its beautiful village,—the “Queen of Spas.” Nature has
furnished Saratoga with a regal setting on the lower spurs of the
Adirondack Mountains, the last elevations of the Palmertown range, on the
edge of the world’s first continent.
[Illustration: SARATOGA LAKE, N. Y.]
Here where the Laurentian rocks stand out boldly over the sands of the
old Silurian sea, and where the mighty waterways sweep down from the
great northern gulf southward, and from the great northwestern lakes
eastward, lies Saratoga Springs. These valleys, bearing the waters of
Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the upper Hudson on the north, and of
the Mohawk River on the west, have been for centuries the great war-paths
of the Indians and of civilized nations. If America is not old, at
least her maturity is marked in this region by the scars of war, and by
the lines of struggle for the sovereignty of the great waterways. Here
are veritable ruins,—old Fort Carillon, later “Old Ticonderoga,” Fort
Frederick, afterward Crown Point, and traces here and there of the line
of forts extending from the Indian carrying-place at Fort Edward down on
either bank of the Hudson to old Saratoga, now Schuylerville, where the
great monument commemorative of Revolutionary victory marks the national
character of that struggle, and where, eight miles below, at Bemis
Heights, fourteen granite tablets, each a monument five or six feet in
height, mark the fighting-ground. Through the Mohawk Valley are signs of
the “Long House” of the Six Nations, of massacres and battles, that tell
their story of three centuries.
[Illustration: HISTORIC AND OTHER DRIVES IN THE VICINITY OF SARATOGA
SPRINGS.
BY E. H. WALWORTH.]
The story of Saratoga cannot easily be limited to Saratoga Springs,
although it has fifteen thousand inhabitants who retain their quaintly
rural government and cling to the appellation of “village.” Village
though it be, it is imposing with its stately hotels, spacious streets,
large business houses, many beautiful villas, fine public halls, handsome
churches, and numerous valuable mineral springs; which, like the
residences, are set amid magnificent trees, forest pines and cultivated
elms that rival the famous trees of New Haven. From the surrounding hills
the village seems to nestle in the original wilderness. But it is always
active,—in winter with its toboggan slide, snow-shoe club, trotting
matches on the ice-bound lake, and snow-bound streets rolled to marble
smoothness for gay and luxurious sleigh-riding; in summer, its brilliancy
is often compared with that of Paris. In the loss of the old-time social
exclusiveness it has gained in cosmopolitan character and in the rich
variety of its life and amusements.
[Illustration: SARATOGA BATTLE MONUMENT, SCHUYLERVILLE, N. Y.]
In considering the story of Saratoga, we cannot confine our attention
to the town of Saratoga Springs, with its sharply defined boundaries
and rectangular lines of political division which mark the limit of the
voters for supervisor at the annual town-meeting. But if we include
the county in our narrative, then, indeed, may we recall the vision
which presents the individuality of the name Saratoga. For Saratoga
County is outlined by a great eastward and southern sweep of the Hudson
River for seventy miles from its narrow gorge at Luzerne, where the
wild savage chief of colonial days leaped across the mighty river to
escape his pursuing foe, down over the precipitous Palmer’s Falls, and
over the cavern-haunted Glen’s Falls, and onward to old Fort Edward,
where its waters turn shortly to the south and pursue their troubled
way along the “hillside country,” which received here its Indian name,
“Se-rach-ta-gue,” which means “hillside country of the great river.”
It is also said that in the Indian language Sa-ragh-to-ga means the
“place of the swift water,” in allusion to the rapids and falls that
are in contrast with the “still water” a few miles below. Thence the
Hudson flows on until it receives the four sprouts or mouths of the
Mohawk River, which spreads out from the precipitous falls at Cohoes.
This great intersecting western valley separates the northern from the
southern highlands of New York, and is, like the great northern valley,
a natural highway and thoroughfare. In the angle formed by the junction
of these two long, deep valleys or passes through the mountain ranges,
“in the angle between the old Indian war-trails, in the angle between
the pathways of armies, in the angle between the great modern routes of
travel, in the angle formed by the junction of the Mohawk and Hudson
rivers,” is Saratoga County, the Saratoga of history and romance. Not
only the stealthy tread of the Iroquois sped over these hills, not only
the swift canoe of the Algonquin shot over these streams, but also the
disciplined armies of France and of England marched and countermarched,
fought by day and bivouacked at night on this ground, from the time
that Hendrick Hudson opened the lower valley of the Hudson River, and
Samuel Champlain discovered the broad lake that bears his name, until the
Revolutionary period closed.
While Jamestown was still struggling for existence, and Plymouth Bay
was still unknown, the contest had already begun in the northern
valley of the Hudson which initiated its long service to the progress
of the western world. This remarkable triangle, the Saratoga and
Kay-ad-ros-se-ra of the Indian occupation, and the Saratoga County of
the present time was, like Kentucky, “the dark and bloody ground,” the
hunting- and fishing-place of the Five Nations on the south, and their
enemies, the Algonquins, on the north. Here each summer, in search of
fish and game, they built their hunting lodges on Saratoga Lake, called
by the Dutch, who believed it to be the “head-waters” of the Hudson,
“Aqua Capita.” Every season brought conflict between the savage tribes,
and later the French, year after year, marched down from Quebec and
Montreal to intimidate their unceasing foes on the Mohawk.
In 1642, and again in 1645, the Iroquois in retaliation hastened along
the old war-trail at the foot of Mount McGregor and returned each time
laden with their tortured captives, the French prisoners and their Indian
friends. The two famous expeditions of Courcelle, Governor of Canada,
and of Lieut.-Gen. de Tracy, made their way in 1666 through the valley;
first on snow-shoes, to starvation and despair—and again with the buoyant
tread of a victorious legion. In 1689 the Iroquois followed the old
trail on their way to that massacre of Montreal which emphasized what is
justly called the “heroic age” of that poetic and devoted settlement.
The French and Algonquins again in 1690 bivouacked at these springs as
they descended to the cruel massacre of Schenectady. And in the same year
the English, led by Fitz John Winthrop, made a fruitless march over the
historic war-path.
[Illustration: NORTH BROADWAY, SARATOGA SPRINGS, 1898.]
The French, urged by Frontenac, came down the valley in 1693, destroyed
the castles of the Mohawks, and started on their return with three
hundred prisoners. The news created intense excitement through the
whole Province of New York. Governor Fletcher hurried up from New York
City, Major Peter Schuyler hastily gathered three hundred white men and
three hundred savages for defence, and was joined by Major Ingoldsby
from Albany with an additional force. Coming along the old trail, the
French and Indians halted with their captives about six miles north
of the village of Saratoga Springs, at a point near Mount McGregor at
King’s Station. The battle-ground lies on the terrace, which is distinct
from the foothills of the mountains, and has long been known as the
“old Indian burying-ground.” On this plateau, so near the gay streets
of Saratoga, the camp-fires of a thousand hostile men throwing up
entrenchments flared through the night. On the following day the English
sustained successfully three fierce assaults on their works, and the
French, worn with the long journey, were glad to retreat in the darkness
of a raging storm, as night fell on their wounded and captives.
Again, during Queen Anne’s War, beginning in 1709, old Saratoga, which
lies at the mouth of the Fishkill, was so seriously threatened that
Major Schuyler built a fort below the mouth of the Batten Kill. In 1731,
the French built Fort Frederick at Crown Point. From this stronghold,
during King George’s War, which began in 1744, they swung their forces
with deadly effect upon the English settlements. The forts at Saratoga
were then refitted and manned, but not in time to prevent the terrible
massacre of old Saratoga in 1745.
History has recorded and poetry sung the woes of Wyoming and of Cherry
Valley, but the silence of the virgin forest has encompassed the tragic
events that occurred at Saratoga on the fatal morning of the 17th of
November, thirty years before the Revolution.
“Profound peace had reigned in the old wilderness for a
generation, and the fertile soil had filled the smiling land
with fatness. Many dwellings and fruitful farms dotted the
river bank; long stables were filled with sleek cattle, and
around the mills were huge piles of timber waiting the market
down the river.”
The scowling portholes of the old Schuyler mansion seemed to laugh
between the tendrils of the creeping vines. Suddenly, in the early
morning, the scene of peace and prosperity was changed to slaughter,
pillage, and destruction. Philip Schuyler, the elder, was offered
immunity in the midst of the fray, but he spurned safety at the expense
of his neighbors, and was shot to death in his own doorway. The houses
and forts were burned to the ground, the cattle killed or burned in their
stalls, and only one or two inhabitants escaped to tell the tale.
[Illustration: GENERAL PHILIP SCHUYLER.
BRONZE STATUE IN NICHE OF SARATOGA MONUMENT, SCHUYLERVILLE, N. Y.]
This war was a prelude to the French and Indian, or Seven Years’ War,
which, with its five campaigns, raged continuously through the war-worn
valley of the grand northern waterways. Nearly a century and a half of
struggle, first of the French discoverers and missionaries with the
savages, and then of the Frenchmen and Iroquois, and later the French,
the Indians, and the English, had proved the importance of this valley
as the northern doorway to the country. Of the three expeditions first
planned to be sent simultaneously against the French—one under Braddock
against Fort Duquesne, another under Shirley against Niagara, and another
under Johnson against Crown Point,—the third was considered the most
important.