Albany, the New York State Capital, has over one hundred thousand people. The city rises from the strip of level land along the river bank, in a series of terraces, to a height of nearly two hundred feet, the top being surmounted by the Capitol Building in a spacious park, back of which the surface extends westward in a sandy, almost level plain. The city spreads broadly along the river, where there are wharves, foundries, railway stations, mills, storehouses and lumber yards. Deep ravines are scarred into the hill behind them, and rows of fine old Knickerbocker houses line the hilly streets, with frequent church towers and spires rising above them. The main street, just back from the river, is Broadway, of varying width, but of the first commercial importance. At right angles to it, leading up the hill, is State Street, a noble avenue, one hundred and fifty feet wide, the front approach to the Capitol. This is the finest building in New York State, was thirty years in construction, and has cost $25,000,000. It is a quadrangle three hundred feet wide and four hundred feet deep, with an unfinished central tower, intended to be three hundred feet high, and Louvre pavilion towers at the angles. It is built in the French Renaissance, of a light-colored granite, pleasantly contrasting with the red-tiled roofs. Few of the pretentious buildings of the world occupy a more commanding situation, standing aloft like the Capitol at Washington, and, seen from afar, a complete old-time French chateau. Mr. E. A. Freeman has written of it, "If anyone had come up to me and told me in French, old or new, that the new Capitol was 'Le Chateau de Monseigneur le duc d'Albanie,' I could almost have believed him." Its architecture combines features adapted from the Louvre and Hotel de Ville of Paris and the Lyons Maison de Commerce. It stands in Capitol Square, a park of about eight acres, of which it covers three acres. The finest halls are the Senate and Assembly Chambers, to which grand stairways lead, and the interior is decorated with rich carvings, rare marbles and emblematic frescoes. The New York State Library, of nearly two hundred thousand volumes, is in the building. Upon the six dormer windows opening in the interior court are emblazoned the heraldic insignia of six noted families distinguished in New York history—Stuyvesant, Schuyler, Livingston, Jay, Clinton and Tompkins.
The State Capitol, Albany, N. Y.
Southward from the Capitol Square is the spacious and comfortable Executive Mansion, with an extensive lawn, on Eagle Street. On the same street, to the northeast of the Square, is the City Hall, a fine Gothic building with an elaborate bell tower. Also on Eagle Street is the Albany Medical College, having one of the finest Medical Museums in the country. Among its curios is the embalmed body of Calvin Edson, the "walking skeleton." This curious man came to Albany in 1830, being then forty-two years old and five feet two inches high, yet weighing only sixty pounds. He exhibited himself, and appeared in a play as Jeremiah Thin. He had a good appetite, but the more he ate the thinner he grew, until in 1833, the food ceasing to nourish him, he literally starved to death amid plenty, and when the end came, weighed but forty-five pounds. His widow sold his body to the college, and he now stands in a glass case, preserved with the skin on, labelled "No. 1," and excepting discoloration is said to appear not very different from when living. On the northern side of the Square is the Albany Academy, one of the chief city schools, where Professor Joseph Henry was for several years an instructor, and noted as the place where he first demonstrated the theory of the magnetic telegraph by ringing a bell by an electric spark transmitted through a mile of wire strung around the room. The Dudley Astronomical Observatory is a small but imposing building upon an eminence overlooking the Hudson, having a munificent endowment begun by Mrs. Blandina Dudley in memory of her husband, a wealthy Albany merchant. A charming spot is Washington Park, westward from the Capitol, an enclosure of eighty-one acres, surrounded by ornamental villas, with magnificent views and most tastefully arranged. Part of this Park is land given the city by King James II.
INTERESTING BUILDINGS.
The most noted old Albany building is at the northern end of Broadway, in grounds extending to the river, and surrounded by fine trees, the ancient Van Rensselaer Mansion, commonly called the "Patroon's,"—a broad house with porch and wide central hall. This occupies the site of the first mansion, which was covered with a roof of reeds. Over on the opposite side of the river at Greenbush, the "Greene Bosch" or "pine woods" of the original settlers, is the Patroon's other residence, built of bricks from Holland, by the second Patroon Johannes. Port-holes were cut in the walls for the musketeers, it having been a fort in the Indian forays. The family burial-ground adjoins the mansion. State Street, at the corner of Pearl, which is parallel with Broadway, is the most interesting historic locality of ancient Albany. Here stood that elaborate dwelling of the Knickerbockers, regarded as the best specimen of old Dutch architecture in New York State, the "Vanderheyden Palace," an extensive building with two tall gables facing the street. One of the old burghers, Johannes Beekman, built it in 1725, and during the Revolution Jacob Vanderheyden of Troy bought it, and lived there many years in the almost regal state of the Dutch aristocracy. Washington Irving tells of it in the story of Dolph Heyliger, in Bracebridge Hall, as the residence of "Herr Anthony Vanderheyden," and when Irving transformed Van Tassel's old farmhouse into his villa at Sunnyside he made a gable in imitation of one of these, and also captured the old weather-vane of the "Palace"—a horse going at full speed—to mount on top of it. Upon the opposite corner was the quaint "Lydius House," the home of Rev. John Lydius, the owner of a great manor at Fort Edward, farther up the Hudson, and in front of it stood the crooked elm, giving the locality the name of the "Old Elm Tree Corner." This tree is said to have been planted by Philip Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who lived in an adjoining house. The "Lydius House" had been built as a parsonage for the clergyman sent out to the old Dutch church, Rev. Gideon Schaats, the bricks, tiles, iron and woodwork, together with the church bell and pulpit, all coming from Holland in 1657, in the same ship. During many years its only occupant was Balthazar Lydius, an eccentric bachelor, a tall, spare, morose and irritable Dutchman, fond of bottle and pipe, and having a round bullet head thinly sprinkled with white hair. He gloried in his celibacy until the infirmities of age came upon him, when it is said he gave a pint of gin for an Indian squaw, called her his wife, and they lived contentedly together until he died. This was the oldest brick building in the United States; its partitions were made of mahogany and the exposed beams were richly carved.
The antique pulpit, which came across in the ship with the materials of the "Lydius House," has done duty from then until now in various Dutch churches of Albany. It is of carved oak, octagonal in form. The original church stood in the middle of State Street, a low building with a tall pyramidal roof and little steeple, since removed to widen the street. The church gallery was quite low, while the huge stove warming the building was put upon a platform so high that the sexton had to step on it from the gallery when he wanted to kindle the fire. The astute Albany philosophers of those days believed heat descended from above. The bell-rope hung from the little steeple down into the centre of the church, and here, at eight o'clock at night, was rung the "suppawn bell," a signal to the obedient people to eat their "suppawn" or hasty pudding, and go to bed. Albany in the olden time had a quaint aspect because of the predominance of steep-roofed houses, with their terraced gables, but many of them have given way for modern improvements. Upon State Street, at the corner of James, lived in one of these the famous Anneke Jans Bogardus, who died there in 1663, the owner of the lands in New York city now partly held by Trinity Church, which her heirs have acquired so much notoriety in trying to recover. A bank now occupies the site. Albany has had some interesting history. In 1754 the Congress met here which was the first colonial organization, and finally developed into the Continental Congress. Seven colonies, north of Maryland, sent twenty-five Commissioners, who made a treaty with the Iroquois, the Indian league of the "Six Nations." Afterwards, under the guidance of Benjamin Franklin, a plan was adopted for a union of the colonies, its provisions being much similar to the United States Constitution of 1787. Thus the germ of the American Union was first developed at Albany. Her influences have been powerful in politics. For many years the "Albany Regency" controlled the old Democratic party, this name having been given by Thurlow Weed, then editor of the Albany Evening Journal, to a junta of politicians usually assembling there, headed by Martin Van Buren. Subsequently, another combination at Albany was potential in ruling the Whigs and in controlling the Republican party—the political firm of "Seward, Weed and Greeley." Albany manœuvres managed to control the preliminaries that twice made Grover Cleveland President; and in both parties the Albany political "patroons" are still industriously at work.
Among the finest Albany buildings is the magnificent new Episcopal Cathedral of All Saints, an English Gothic structure, as yet incomplete, which will be one of the most beautiful churches in America. In the southern part of the city is the Schuyler Mansion, built in 1760, a brick house with a broad front, having a closed octagonal porch over the doorway and spacious apartments; its lawns in the olden time reaching to the Hudson, where now the city is densely built. Peter Schuyler was the first Mayor of Albany, and his descendant, General Philip Schuyler of the Revolution, occupied a large space in New York history. In this house Alexander Hamilton was married to Elizabeth Schuyler, and a subsequent owner, Mrs. McIntosh, was made the wife of Millard Fillmore, President of the United States. General Schuyler and his family always dispensed a princely hospitality in this mansion. In 1781, towards the close of the Revolution, it was the scene of a stirring event. The British, discovering that Schuyler was at home, tried to capture him. The house was then distant from the small town and surrounded by forests. A party of Canadians and Indians prowled for several days in the woods, and capturing a laborer, learnt that the General was in the house with a bodyguard of six men. The laborer escaped afterwards and notified the General. Upon a sultry day in August, when three of the guards were asleep in the basement and the other three lying on the grass in front of the house, a servant announced that a stranger at the back gate wished to speak with the General. The errand being apprehended, the doors and windows were barred, the family collected up stairs, and the General hastened to his bedchamber for his arms. From the window he saw the place surrounded by armed men, and fired a pistol to arouse the guards on the grass and alarm the town. At this moment the enemy burst open the doors, when Mrs. Schuyler suddenly discovered she had left her infant in the cradle in the hall below. She rushed to the rescue, but the General stopped her. One of her daughters then quickly ran down stairs, and carried the infant up in safety. An Indian who had entered hurled a tomahawk, as she rushed up the stairs, which cut her dress within a few inches of the baby's head, and striking the hand-rail made a deep scar. As she ran up stairs, the Tory commander, thinking her a servant, called out, "Wench, where is your master?" With great presence of mind she quickly replied, "Gone to alarm the town." General Schuyler heard her, and taking advantage, threw up a window, crying out loudly, as if to a multitude, "Come on, my brave fellows, surround the house and secure the villains!" The marauders, who were then plundering the plate in the dining-room, becoming frightened, beat a hasty retreat, taking prisoners the three guards who were in the house. The brave daughter, who made the gallant rescue, afterwards became the wife of the last Patroon Van Rensselaer, while the infant she saved lived until 1857, and was Schuyler's last surviving child, Mrs. Catharine Cochran of Oswego, New York. General Schuyler is buried in the beautiful Albany Rural Cemetery, north of the city, and nearby is Palmer's famous figure of the "Angel at the Sepulchre." Here is also the tomb of President Chester A. Arthur, who died in 1886.
THE MODERN TROY.