Sheridan Avenue Memorial

Tucked into the corner of Sheridan Avenue and Dove Street, this fenced plot of grass is home to a memorial which (according to a short 2002 piece in the Times Union) honors residents of Albany's 12th Ward who fought and died in World War II.

I remember driving past this corner often as a little girl. At the time, I didn't really distinguish between memorials and mausoleums. Which led to a rather macabre image of fallen soldiers actually entombed inside, just behind that flag. The flag, back then, was smaller and set against a blue background. I'm not sure when it was repainted, but I recall it was quite shabby when I was young.

The Missing Viaduct

A few months ago, I blogged about the flights of stairs leading up from Sheridan Hollow. Pictured above is the unused flight leading up to a weed-covered gate near the Erastus Palmer house on Columbia Place.

Very near this set of crumbling steps was the old Hawk Street viaduct. This pedestrian bridge, considered an engineering marvel when it was completed around 1890, spanned a thousand feet over Sheridan Hollow to connect the neighborhoods around the Capitol to the northern part of the City.

The viaduct is long gone. I've only seen it in photos on old postcards. As of the early 90s, a small remnant of the south abutment was supposedly visible near these stairs. Even that seems to have vanished, apparently beneath the parking garage.

Revelations

My great-uncle used to live down in Sheridan Hollow when I was very little. His house there is long, long gone; a fire destroyed the building and a parking lot now occupies the corner.

On a short cut through the old neighborhood this past autumn, I passed that corner for the first time in years. The asphalt paving had crumbled away to reveal a surprisingly elegant pattern of bricks beneath.

Down In The Hollow

This is the view west along Sheridan Avenue just above North Pearl Street. This street was once the bed of a stream, the Fox Creek or Vozenkill. After the stream was moved underground (not unlike the Beaverkill across town), the area known as Sheridan Hollow was built over with small, shabby flats and the area became one of 19th-century Albany's slums.

The area became home to immigrant families, mostly new arrivals from Ireland. Unemployment in the Hollow was estimated at 20%. Despite a then-modern sewer created when the Vozenkill was buried, sanitation was poor and many of the houses relied on privies. Water- and sewage-borne diseases such as cholera were all too common afflictions. Overcrowding was so extreme that an 1850 census showed 84 people (from less than twenty families) living in only three two-story homes.

The area remains very shabby to this day. A hotel and upscale restaurant (Yono's at the right of this photo), a nice cafe (the Victory) do well enough at its eastern most end. But venture up the street - past the gloomy bulk of the old ANSWERS incinerating plant and a small assortment of industrial buildings and parking facilities for the State offices on the hill to the south - and there's very little to see. Just rows of abandoned wood-frame row houses with boarded windows and NO TRESPASSING signs. The area was rough enough around the edges when I was a child and my favorite great-uncle lived on Sheridan Ave. at South Swan. But it's gone down since then.