CITY NEIGHBORHOODS:

Picturing the People and Places of Albany

The City of Albany has been alive for almost four hundred years, growing and changing, reflecting the people who have made it their home.  From a compact city that hugged the shore of the Hudson River, the city has spread westward up hills and across ravines with people as they have moved into and through it.  Generation after generation of people from around the world have come and gone, leaving subtle yet distinct marks on the landscape of their home. While they may seem ordinary, these have been unique communities within the larger community of Albany.  People built homes, businesses and churches unique to themselves and their cultures. Challenges and issues have affected peoples’ lives   Living near one another, people and their neighbors have sometimes had distinguishing characteristics.

In the process of living lives, people built neighborhoods.  Familiar places, the boundaries of these neighborhoods have shifted and changed, redefined by each generation of people who have lived there.  More than twenty-nine neighborhoods have been identified in the life of Albany, some have been as small as a city block.  Some are only a memory, while others remain an integral part of the landscape and people of Albany.  Eight well recognized neighborhoods stir the minds of the people of Albany today:

The Albany Institute of History & Art is exploring these eight neighborhoods of Albany through the visual record of historic photographs.  Through a series of eight exhibitions we are presenting visual stories of where some of the people of Albany have lived, worked, played and the communities they built between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries.  Presented by neighborhood, each exhibition in the series consists of photographs, drawn from the rich collections of the Albany Institute of History & Art.  The photographs presented in each exhibition will be added to this website forming a cumulative electronic record of Albany’s neighborhoods accessible to a wide variety of audiences.