Van Rensselaer Park

A pair of old iron gates flanking an entrance to Van Rensselaer Park between Ten Broeck Street and Hall Place. 

Since this pretty little green space was once the old Colonie burial grounds, I'll probably post much more about this park at albanychurchgrounds.wordpress.com fairly soon (I've slowly expanded that blog to not only cover the Church Grounds at the Rural Cemetery, but other historic and long-gone Albany burial grounds).

Arbor Hill Door

The rear door of the 1798 Ten Broeck Mansion which hosted a very enjoyable Living History fair yesterday afternoon.  Set on a steep slope above Ten Broeck Street at Livingston Avenue, it was once called Arbor Hill (the name now applies to the much larger neighborhood itself).

The Corner

Old street signs mounted on a house at the corner of Ten Broeck Street and Clinton Avenue.

Ten Broeck Street Doorway

A beautiful, but deteriorating doorway on Ten Broeck Street. This entrance features classically carved stone and intricate cast iron framing a graceful barrel-vaulted ceiling just inside the fanlight.

Other Ten Broeck Street posts:

Facade
Hauntings
The Five-Sided House
The Ten Broeck Mansion

The Ten Broeck Mansion

I'm quite ashamed to admit that, despite a lifelong love of local history, I've never actually visited the Ten Broeck Mansion (or the Schuyler Mansion across town...or Cherry Hill). Maybe it's because, when I was growing up, no one brought be there due to the tough reputation of the neighborhoods surrounding each of these historic homes. Maybe I just never got around to going.

Whatever the reason, I mean to make up for lost time next year. Consider it one of my New Years resolutions...to visit all three of the above sites.

The photo above shows the Ten Broeck Mansion on the high ground above the street of the same name. The house was built in the late 1790s when the land was actually part of the Township of Watervliet and leased from the Patron, Stephen Van Rensselaer. Originally called Prospect because of its excellent views of the Hudson River just north of Albany, it was later called Arbour Hill...a name that extends to the surrounding neighborhoods to this day.

Click here to visit the Ten Broeck Mansion's site.

(And be sure to check out the wonderful photos of the interior and gardens)

Facade

Something about this brick house with understated understated brownstone trim on Ten Broeck Street has always caught my attention.

I'm not sure why it's always been the one that stands out for me. It's not the most ornate building along that row of handsome 19th-century homes, nor is it the only one with boarded windows and look of neglect. And, so far, I haven't been able to find much about this house's history.

There's just something haunted and haunting about the place.

On a recent stroll over Ten Broeck Street, I caught an unexpected glimpse of bright sunlight shining through a gap near the padlocked door. I tried peeking through and, while I couldn't see much, I realized that this elegantly austere facade is just that...a facade. There is little or nothing behind those covered windows.

A second round of hasty research turned up a short history of the location here:

http://www.historic-albany.org/news64.html

Hauntings

I knew someone who grew up in this house in the 50s and 60s after moving from the Carolinas at a young age. He had written an account of his childhood and his close relationship with his sister who later died of AIDS in a notebook and I typed the manuscript for him. Sadly, I lost his contact information when my laptop crashed last year. His story was unfinished at the time I typed it and I'd love to know how it really ended.

After working on that manuscript, I decided to look for the house based on his description of a white-columned brownstone and, once I located it, I just had to do a little research. The house, which stands on Ten Broeck Street (see my previous blog about another house is this area), was built in 1859 by a George Dawson who was associated with the venerable Albany printing and publish firm of Weed, Parsons, and Company.

My friend told me the house was haunted. He and his sister were afraid to go up to the top floor because there was a ghost there. To him, the man in the metal helmet looked like a conquistador. But I'm wondering if this ghostly resident of 49 Ten Broeck might not have been a 17th-century Dutch soldier from one of the earliest forts. Exactly how and why a ghost from the 1600s found his way to the upper floor of a house that wasn't built for another two hundred or so years, I don't know. But it does make more sense that a Spanish conquistador haunting an upstate New York row house and the metal helmet makes me think of Dutch soldiers helmets I've seen in local museums.

(Yes, I do believe in ghosts. Not because I'm superstitious or want to believe, but because I've experienced hauntings often enough to convince me.)

The house is not in the best of shape now. The brown sandstone was cut and laid vertically which, unfortunately, leads to large pieces flaking away. The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception across town suffers from a similar problem and is currently undergoing a massive restoration. The house's white columns are also showing signs of rot. But the last time I walked by, I was cheered to see that the old place is no longer vacant. The windows were open and one had a building permit pasted to the glass and a worker was moving around inside.

The Five-sided House

Though it's a bit out of my way, the Ten Broeck neighborhood is one of my favorites. In the heart of the old Arbor Hill, this area contains some of the most interesting old buildings in the city...the empty, but magnificent St. Joseph's Church, the Ten Broeck Mansion on the hill that gave the district its name, and rows of handsome 19th-century houses.

Many of the old houses along Ten Broeck Street have fallen on hard times. Windows are covered by boards, cast iron railings are rusting or missing, stone facades crumbling. One old brick building (which will appear in a future post) is nothing but a facade now.

But, to my delight, some of these old houses are being restored. Work permits are posted in grimy windows and piles of wood and tools can be glimpsed through open doors. Last winter, my friend and I got a peek inside one restoration-in-progress along the 100 block. The Victorian townhouse was being stripped done to the barest of bones. Brick walls had been stripped of all plaster, sub-floors were exposed, windows removed. But one still got a sense of the house's original elegance in the steep narrow stairs with their heavy newel posts and dark wood banisters and the graceful arch dividing the two main rooms on the first floor.

The 1873 house pictured above stands at the corner of Ten Broeck Street and the steep hill of Livingston Avenue. In fact, the steepness of the hill contributed to an accident - a streetcar once lost control while descending towards North Pearl and struck the house, though no evidence of that damage remains.

It's a fanciful house with a slate-covered mansard roof, lacy cast iron trim, a lovely window on the narrow fifth wall, and light fixtures in the shape of bats' wings flank the front door. Built as a private house, it later served as a rectory for the nearby Church of the Holy Innocents (now closed). And it stands opposite the much older Ten Broeck Mansion, home to a number of prominent Albany families over the centuries.