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

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

Beaver Park

Perched on a steep hill, quite close to the Thomas O'Brien Academy of Science and Technology and the Lincoln Park playground, this pale yellow brick building was once the workplace of the noted 19th-century geologist, James Hall.

The laboratory overlooks the Lincoln Park pool to the east and, just to the north, the remnants of the Beaver Kill Ravine (see my previous two posts here and here). From the latter came the estate's name, Beaver Park. While Hall and his family actually resided in another house which stood on the present site of the Lincoln Park tennis courts at the corner of Delaware and Morton Avenues, he spent much of his time at and was most at home in this laboratory and often slept there in a simple, small bedroom.

A plaque on the south facade sums up the building's history.

This building was erected by JAMES HALL State Geologist of New York 1836-1898
For fifty years it served as his office and laboratory and from it graduated many geologists of merit and distinction. During most of that period it was an influential and active centre of geological science in this country. Erected by The Association of American State Geologists 1916

Designed by Andrew Jackson Downing and Calvert Vaux (two leading architects and landscape designers of their day, Vaux worked with Frederick Law Olmstead on the design of New York's Central Park), the building housed Hall's drawings and extensive collections of fossils and other specimens which are now a part of the NYS Museum just north across the park.

The laboratory, now renamed the Sunshine Building and painted a buttery yellow, is now part of the Albany City School District.

Click here for a short profile of Professor Hall.