Spring (With The Scars of Winter)

A magnolia tree in Lincoln Park.  The recent April snow storm was not very kind to these white blossoms.

Ice & Fuel

Old metal sign on the wall of the old City Ice & Fuel Company at the corner of Park Avenue and Swan Street. I've previously written about an unwelcome "additive" of sorts that was found in ice from this facility decades ago in a post about the building's distinctive red tubes.

Monoliths

This slab of stone brings to mind some ancient monolith, but it's actually part of the Geological Rock Park tucked beside the Thomas O'Brien Academy of Arts and Sciences inside Lincoln Park.

The Park consists of rows of boulders lining a path running roughly southeast of the school and just a stone's throw (pun unintended) from the shale-lined Beaverkill gully. Close to the school there is a sign identifying the specimen boulders which include various types of limestone, dolostone, garnet, and slate.

The Park's location is appropriate since this was once part of the estate of Professor James Hall, a man remembered as one of the country's leading 19th-century geologists and paleontologists, and the boulders are overlooked by the building that once housed Hall's work.

Another monolith of sorts, the soaring Corning Tower, looms in the background, along with the New York State Museum (which now holds Hall's collections) and the twin spires of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

Med-O-Land

As a child, I romped a lot around the Lincoln Park playground (and, after, would stop for a popsicle or bag of shelled sunflower seeds at the nearby Lincoln Pharmacy) quite a bit. But I didn't notice this plaque - one of a matching pair - until a few years ago when I took a short cut through the park on the way home from work.

I remember Med-O-Land quite well, though I didn't know that's what it was called. Lots of bulbous metal shapes with round holes to be used as footholds for climbing or for peering out of like portals. Some looked like giant clam-shaped pods. There was definitely an outer space look to them, appropriate to the era, I suppose. And I'd actually forgotten Med-O-Land entirely until a 2006 visit to Seattle when I looked up at the Space Needle and something about its design suddenly made me recall the Lincoln Park playground of my childhood.

Med-O-Land has been replaced by modern, safer playground equipment which doesn't quite have the excitement of those holey blue metal shapes. And the Lincoln Park playground, in its various incarnations over the years, is actually Albany's first playground...according to yet another plaque nearby.

Tubes

A trio of enormous pipes at the old City Fuel & Ice Company building at the corner of Swan Street and Park Avenue.

The old Fuel & Ice Company stands next to the former Hinckel Brewery complex and just across the corner is the eastern entrance to the Beaverkill gully in Lincoln Park.

A family member told me an unpleasant story about this place which used to supply ice to local restaurants. One day, a large rat was found embedded in a block of ice. Rats weren't too uncommon in Albany, especially around the breweries and buried streams. Rather than discard the block, the workers merely chiseled out the dead rodent and sold the remaining chunk of ice to a restaurant.

Community Gardens

March is sign-up season for the area's Community Garden program. I have my own backyard (which looks more than a little messy at the moment) so I've never taken part in this wonderful program which provides residents with plots in a number of urban gardens throughout Albany, Troy, and Schenectady. It's a great chance for people who do not have garden space of their own to get outside, enjoying working with the earth, and raise fresh vegetables.

This garden is the Charles Shoudy Memorial Garden on Swan Street, just steps away from the lamentably defunct nature trail through Lincoln Park's Beaverkill gully (see my previous posts about that favorite spot of mine) and was taken at the end of last year's growing season.

For more information on the Community Gardens and to sign up for a plot, see their site:

www.cdcg.org

The Beaverkill - Part Five

Since I've been exploring the gully in Lincoln Park with its hidden (and, sadly, malodorous) remnant of the Buttermilk Falls, I've regretted that there are almost no images of the Beaverkill in its original state.

There are hundred-year old postcards showing the area after it became Beaver Park and the Beaverkill does appear in an 18th-century painting of Abraham Wendell. In the latter, the falls are obscured behind one of Wendell's mills. But that painting does show the pool at the base of the falls and gives at least an inkling of the original height of the cliffs around the falls.

So, I have to rely on imagination to picture this place as it looked two or three centuries ago with the unrestrained falls tumbling and foaming through the stone pass.

On a recent venture into the gully before the recent snows, I was pleasantly surprised to find a miniature waterfall of sorts. Not an actual waterfall, but a small frozen cascade where groundwater had forced its way through a weak point in the shale.

For the previous entries on the Beaverkill, see the links below.


Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Winter In The Beaverkill

Crow Feathers

Albany has a problem with crows. There's thousands of them. For a time, they were roosting en masse just off New Scotland Avenue near the Albany Law School. Attempts at crow "dispersal" - scaring them away with noises and lights, etc. - haven't made much of an impact. The crows have simply found new places to roost.

I've seen quite a few more crows in the Center Square since the most recent round of dispersal efforts. In the evening, I see hundreds of them flying and cawing over my house and, for the first time, there's crow droppings in my backyard.

These crow feathers were photographed in the Beaverkill Ravine in Lincoln Park.

Crows are said to be very intelligent birds. Also, they are capable of differentiating human faces, have good memories...and hold grudges. I don't dislike them. In fact, they're handsome birds. But in such great numbers, they're rather scary.

Pointing the way

The Schuyler Mansion is one of Albany's oldest houses and best preserved. And, like the Ten Broeck Mansion across town, I will awkwardly admit that I have never actually visited it...unless you count a brief stroll across the grounds just before closing time one evening.

The handsome brick home of General Philip Schuyler was host to a number of famous Revolutionary War-era figures, from General Burgoyne to the Marquis de Lafayette. Originally called The Pastures, it was built ca. 1761. In the late 19th century, well after passing from the Schuyler descendants' possession, it housed an orphanage. It was designated as an historic monument in 1917 and is now a museum.

This sign is one of several pointing the way to the Mansion. Located not too far west of the old Pastures at the corner of Delaware and Morton Avenues, it is currently lying on its side by the Lincoln Park tennis courts as the area has been in the midst of a major street reconstruction project.

For more information on the Schuyler Mansion:

Friends of the Schuyler Mansion
Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site

I also want to take a moment to wish a very Happy New Year to all the readers of this blog and once again invite anyone with an interest in local history to please visit my fledgling companion blog, Albany NY History

Winter In The Beaverkill Ravine

For the past several months, I've been blogging about the gully in Lincoln Park and the underground Beaverkill which can be glimpsed through a grating within the gully. I'm not quite sure why this spot fascinates me so, but it simply does.

So, of course, when I passed the gully on the way to Walgreens recently, I just had to venture inside and see how it looks in the winter. I didn't go too far into the ravine this time, only because I wasn't wearing boots and the snow looked rather damp towards the middle. But I could still hear the rushing of water from the Beaverkill tumbling through the culverts under that mundane-looking metal grate...and, as always, there was a subtle haunting feeling to the place.

Click below for my posts about the Beaverkill...I will be writing more soon. And, despite the cold, Sunday's peek inside probably won't be the last this winter.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

Lost In The Wilderness - Part Five

This is the fifth in a series of posts on the Beaver Kill Ravine.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Aside from the presence of the old brick and stone culvert giving a glimpse of a rushing river beneath the Lincoln Park gully, my other favorite feature of the Beaverkill ravine is the stone. The north and south walls of the gully are lined with heavy gray-black outcroppings of truly ancient bedrock.

According to a geology report in a 1930 bulletin from the New York State Museum, the stone is "Snake Hill shale" which it describes as a "dark, argillaceous, intricately folded and crumpled, as much as 3,000 feet deep."

According to the same 1930 report, there are very few places around Albany where this ancient bedrock lies exposed. I've seen similar stone along the Normskill near Delaware Avenue at the City's southern boundary. The other location given in the bulletin is a spot called Black Rock Cut, somewhere along the old NY Central Tracks near Tivoli Lake.

To be continued...

The Beaver Kill Ravine - Part Four

This is the fourth in a series of posts on the Beaver Kill Ravine.

A combination of books and old maps, including one dating back to 1790 helps to trace - approximately - the original route of the Beaver Kill.

The lost river begins its course much further uptown near the present Albany High School campus. When I was a student there, I remember catching a glimpse of running water beneath a storm drain in the main courtyard and I now wonder if that might have been some part of the Beaver Kill.

From the school's vicinity, the stream would have flowed east roughly between Washington and Western Avenues until turning somewhat southward near Quail Street. From Quail, it continued east down Elberon Place and through what is now Washington Park where in now forms part of the lake.

From the eastern end of the Park lake, the stream would have flowed south along New Scotland Avenue before veering sharply to the east beneath modern Myrtle Avenue. The old Albany Penitentiary once stood near the current sites of the Veteran's Administration Hospital and Hackett Middle School.

Across from Hackett, the stream flowed through the Lincoln Park ravine shown above - one of the last visible features of the Beaver Kill - and continued east through the future site of the Park before crossing Broadway at Arch Street and flowing into the Hudson River near the present U-Haul Building.

In the 1880s, a plaque was placed in a curb at the corner of Arch and Broadway noting that the Beaver Kill - "an ancient waterway now arched over" - once flowed through that area of Albany's South End. A cursory exploration of that intersection a few weeks ago turned up no trace of the old plaque. I wasn't surprised that I could not find the plaque since the area has been rebuilt and repaved many times over the decades, but I was still a little disappointed.

To be continued...

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Five
Winter In The Beaver Kill

The Beaver Kill Ravine - Part Three

This is the third in a series of posts on the Beaver Kill Ravine.

Looking down into the metal grate, I saw a short vertical shaft of red brick. Below the shaft, there was a low tunnel of small stone blocks. And, careening furiously through the gray stone tunnel, were the remnants of the Beaverkill and Buttermilk Falls.

Albany once had a generous number of small rivers and creeks running through it. Of them, only the Normanskill near the City's southern limits is largely intact and parts of the Patroon Creek are visible crossing Central Avenue near the border with Colonie before running off into the Tivoli Nature Preserve.

The rest of the kills are long gone - buried, diverted, long lost beneath streets and buildings. The Ruttenkill (supposedly so named for the rats that frequented its banks) rose above Lark Street and cut a steep course parallel to Hudson Avenue right down to the river at the foot of State Street Hill. Foxes Creek (previously known as the Vozenkill) also rose above Lark, flowed through a deep ravine (before being diverted to flow under Canal Street, now Sheridan Avenue), crossed under North Pearl Street to meet the Hudson.

And the Beaverkill? It was long since diverted underground. But more on that later.

But here, roaring and tumbling through a venerable stone culvert was a small and quite obscure but visible remainder of the Beaverkill.

The picture above was taken on a later visit to the ravine. Heavy rains had flooded the ravine. A gray, stagnant lake filled much of the eastern half of the gully. And the solid metal grate had been ripped free from its base.

Click here for a view of the intact grate as seen from the south rim of the ravine.

Thrilled to have a chance to see the Beaverkill without the necessary, but obstructing grate, I was able to lean over the edge and capture some video of the roaring water. It wasn't easy to get a steady footing since the ground around the culvert was a sticky, shift mess of loose gravel and slick mud and I was more than a little worried that I might loose my balance and drop the camera into the shaft. Still, I was able to capture the rushing water from two angles (without losing the camera).

Click here to view the video and try not to get too dizzy.

As you can see, the water pours out of the stone culvert, drops down, and flows into a lower section of culvert which, due to the angle and difficult footing, I was not able to take photos or video of.

To be continued...

Part One
Part Two
Part Four
Part Five
Winter In The Beaver Kill

The Beaver Kill Ravine - Part Two

When I first ventured into the Lincoln Park gully, it was strewn with much more litter and debris than it is in these recent photos. Coming into the ravine from the western end, I encountered a slightly shabby blue recliner sitting quite incongruously in the middle of the trail only a few yards from the rickety wooden steps.

From the old wooden steps, one can almost see straight through to the far end of the ravine near Swan Street. Even with a full canopy of leaves, the ravine was much lighter than it seems from the outside.

Even with the light and good visibility, though, there was a tremendous sense of isolation within the gully. Even with obvious reminders of the modern world outside...such as soda cans and plastic bags and glimpses of buildings on the street above...there was real feeling of being totally separate from the rest of the city.

Contributing greatly to this sense of detachment and remoteness were the steep rock walls I recognize from that old family photo. The rocks are smudged with green mosses and lined with diagonal ridges which seemed to have been caused by rushing water.

And the sound of rushing water is much clearer once you're in the ravine. It comes from a heavy metal grate near the center of the trail.

Over the years, I'd heard about the various streams that once criss-crossed through Albany...the Patroon Creek, the Rutten Kill, the Normanskill, the Foxenkill, and the Beaver Kill. Most of them have long since been diverted underground...the most notable exception being the Normanskill (which will appear in future posts).

I knew that the Beaver Kill once ran through some part of Lincoln Park, that its Buttermilk Falls once provided water power to nearby breweries. I'd even seen old post cards of the Beaver Kill Ravine in antique stores. But I always assumed it was closer to Dead Man's Hill and never really connected it with the wooded gully across from Hackett Middle School.

But as soon as I found that metal grate...even before I got close enough to peer down into it...I knew I'd found the old Beaver Kill.

To be continued...

Part One
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Winter In The Beaver Kill

The Beaver Kill Ravine - Part One

At the northwest corner of Lincoln Park - on the corner of Delaware and Park Avenues opposite the Hackett Middle School - there's a wooded gully that has intrigued me for years.

As a child, I never thought of venturing into the trees. The ravine beyond them seemed so dark and deep...and I was warned not to by a justifiably over-protective aunt. I always wondered what was down there, but the sense of mystery and all those warnings made the place very spooky. My young mind conjured up all sorts of scary notions of treacherous terrain littered with dead bodies.

A couple of years ago, I was looking through an album full of old family photos. I found one picture from the summer of 1936 that showed a little girl posing in front of an unfamiliar rocky outcropping. A penciled description on the back identified the location as Lincoln Park, but I couldn't quite place it. The rock wall didn't match up with any of the Park's very familiar hills (see the previous post about Dead Man's Hill) and I began to wonder if the picture was mislabeled.

Some months later, I was running some errands in the area around the Lincoln Park gully. Curiosity got the better of me and I walked along the southern edge of the ravine, peering through the trees to see just what was really down there. I was in for three surprises.

First, the ravine - which is approximately one city block in length - wasn't nearly as deep, dark or scary as I'd imagined. In fact, it wasn't nearly as rugged as some of the ravines I used to explore in the wonderful old Albany Rural Cemetery. And not scary at all.

Second, near the midpoint of the ravine, I spotted a series of rock formations and immediately recognized the outcroppings from the old photo. So, it was Lincoln Park after all!

And, finally, I was certain I could hear the sound of rushing water. But there were no visible streams.

A few weeks later, I decided to venture into the gully...

To be continued.

This was the first of a series of posts about the old Beaver Kill ravine...

Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Winter In The Beaver Kill

Dead Man's Hill

I guess a lot of towns have a "Dead Man's Hill." Albany's is located in Lincoln Park, just off Morton Avenue.

Lincoln Park lies just south of Albany's most visible landmark, the Empire State Plaza. It includes a playground and tennis courts along Delaware Avenue and a large circular swimming pool near Swan Street.

The land was once known as Beaver Park and was home to James Hall, a noted geologist and paleontologist. Hall was also director of the NYS Museum which is a key part of the nearby Plaza. Part of Hall's house survives as part of the old Sunshine School building near the playground.

I once read that Dead Man's Hill didn't get its grim name from sledding mishaps, but from the "massacre" of several Dutch settlers by local Native Americans in the pre-Revolutionary War era. I wish I could remember where I read that because I've never been able to find solid references to this so-called massacre and other accounts talk of such an incident at the opposite end of the park, near the ravine across from the Hackett Middle School (I will write more about this ravine in a future post).

Not that this region didn't have its share of such events, most notably the 1690 Schenectady massacre of 60 Dutch settlers (including ten women and a dozen children) by Native Americans (mostly Sault and Algonquin) and French soldiers under Frontenac. A man named Symon Schermerhorn famously rode from Schenectady to Albany in the dead of night to carry news of the attack, despite being wounded himself. His ride, like Paul Revere's, was commemorated in a long poem by Albany poet, Alfred B. Street (Street is hardly remembered now, but his verses - many of which dealt with nature and the Civil War - were very popular in the 19th-century and I'm very fond of his work. I'd love to editi a complete volume of his poems someday).

But, for every well-documented events like the Schenectady massacre, there are dozens of half-forgotten or heavily embellished folk stories that are quite hard to verify.

If zipping down a steep hill on a sled isn't quite your idea of fun, Dead Man's Hill is a lovely spot to sit on a spring or summer day. There are a couple of benches, the view of the Plaza and downtown Albany is impressive, and there's a Stewart's Shop just across the road if you want an ice cream treat.

The top of the hill also features a tribute to a much better known dead man...a bronze plaque in memory of John Lennon.