North Albany

CITY NEIGHBORHOODS:

Picturing the People and Places of Albany

NORTH ALBANY

The neighborhood of North Albany has been defined as much by the life and character of its residents as the geography of the area. The neighborhood stretches from Colonie St. in the south, one and a half miles northward to Menand. A changing community, it sits on a flat plane of land between the Hudson River on the east and a ridge of gradually rising sandy hills broken by creeks and gullies on the west. North Albany was farmland first occupied by Europeans when Jeremias Van Rensselaer established a house, mill and barns adjacent to Patroon Creek , near present-day Tivoli Street, in 1666. The center of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck, a small settlement of Manor tenants and farm workers grew up in an area that became known as Colonie. The imposing brick Van Rensselaer Manor House dominated the area of Broadway on the northern edge of the city until the late nineteenth century.

The neighborhood began to grow and change in 1825 when the Erie Canal was completed connecting New York City and Albany with Buffalo and the mid-west. Locks No. 1 and No. 2 on the Erie Canal adjacent to the Hudson River became exchange points for people and produce moving east and west. Running northward one and one-half miles from a sheltered harbor for canal boats known as the Basin at North Ferry Street, slips were built along the Canal. The wharves were used for the storage of lumber shipped from the Adirondacks, the upper Midwest and Canada to New York City, South America and Australia. “The Lumber District” grew rapidly after 1845 as landlords Stephen and William P. Van Rensselaer built more slips along the Canal for lumber dealers. The lumber business declined by the early 20^th century due to a shrinking supply and a devastating 1908 fire that destroyed much of the yards.

Easy access to canal and railroad transportation networks also made the area ideal for industrial manufacturing. Factories producing books, woodwork, ice, stoves, machine tools, grease, signals and carriages sprang up along Broadway. Narrow streets and factory buildings lining Broadway north of the city echo the vibrant industrial life of the North End during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The area became popularly known as “Limerick” because of the large Irish working class families who settled there. To this day in the farthest reaches of North Albany we see neighborhoods of closely packed houses that sprang up around factories and warehouses, within an easy trolley ride or walk for laborers and their families.

The extension of North Pearl Street from Pleasant Street to Emmett Street and beyond to Menands in 1925 opened another major thoroughfare through the North End. Developers built new houses on Pearl, Walter, Lindbergh, Lawn and Bonheim Streets through the Depression years. It was not until 1953 when the Edwin Corning Homes were completed bringing 1,000 new residents and Interstate 90 cut through the neighborhood North First Street, Broadway, Genesee Street and Mohawk Street above North Pearl St., that the neighborhood began to change again. Industries have also shutdown or moved away.