Baby Pool

According to the folks in the Rensselaer, NY FaceBook Group, the "Baby Pool" at the corner of East St. and Fourth Ave. has been a summer tradition since the early 1950's. This year the pool got a makeover with a new surface and a variety of cool new water sprays.


WNYT News Channel 13: Trying to Beat the Heat [with video]

RENSSELAER -- We finally get real summer temperatures with two days in a row above 90 degrees.

We could be on the way to our first official heat wave this year, and the newly-rehabbed water spray park on East Street in Rensselaer is hopping.

The baby pool will be open through Aug. 22nd, and the hours are Mon-Fri,, 11am-7pm and Sat. 12-4pm (closed Sundays).

Crailo From the Water

Crailo neighborhood from the river, July 12, 2009 (click to enlarge).

Rainbow Wed. - Cell Pic

Rainy Gardens - Part II

Here's another fabulous location from the Rensselaer County Garden Tour 2009, which is a fund-raiser for Cornell Cooperative Extension's Master Gardner Program.

This was not just a garden, but an detailed landscape. The description in the guide says this started out as a 5-acre mowed field. Of course, that was over 40 years ago, but I'm still jealous that I haven't gotten there yet with my own garden.

This garden featured lots and lots of containers (not necessarily the expensive decorative ones - many were plain plastic). These were mixed throughout the regular plantings. It looked great - I'll have to give that a try. There were also many of "antique shop" type ornaments - this is a very heavily accessorized garden!

Rainy Gardens - Part I

The Rensselaer County Garden Tour 2009 required mud-boots and a big umbrella, but wet gardens are still gorgeous. I only had time to visit a few of the gardens close to Rensselaer, but it was well worth braving the rain.

Unfortunately, low light means blurry photos with my old camera. (I was rushing and forgot to take multiple pics.) I salvaged a few by shrinking them down. Click to enlarge the rectangular photos.














This garden is so much prettier than these few images show. (I didn't manage to capture any of the paths, arbors or outbuildings.)

Roses and Thorns

Here are two extremes of the garden spectrum in the North End.

River Day Roundup

The Clearwater sails past the Albany Yacht Club in Rensselaer, where the Onrust was docked.

View of the Half Moon from River Front Park:

Keith Pray's Big Soul Ensemble played all afternoon (check their schedule to see them again):

The Record: River Week wraps up in Capital District

RENSSELAER — The 1930s fireboat John J. Harvey fired its water cannons high into the air Saturday as it led the way for a historic flotilla of heritage vessels as part of the Hudson River Quadricentennial Celebration.

Thousands watched from Riverfront Park as the vessels arrived in the area, sounding their horns and blasting their cannons in salute to the crowds as well as the U.S.S. Slater docked on the other side of the river in Albany.

Memorial Day Parade

Historic Register Sites

The city of Rensselaer, NY has a number of sites listed in the state and national historic registers. Here is a brief virtual tour.

Fort Crailo
10 Riverside Ave., Rensselaer

Crailo was a fortified colonial home on the Van Rensselaer estate of Rensselaerswyck. It is now maintained as the Crailo Museum by NY State, and will open this year on July 4th weekend. According to their site, "Crailo was built in the early 18th century by Hendrick Van Rensselaer, grandson of the First Patroon. Hendrick died in 1740 and his eldest son, Johannes, inherited Crailo. He remodeled the house and added an east wing in the Georgian style, reflecting the increasing influence of the English on the Albany-area Dutch."

Aiken House
Corner of Riverside/Broadway and Aiken Aves., Rensselaer, NY

William Aiken came from Dutchess County as a young man, and purchased land from Patroon Stephen Van Rensselaer III in 1810. Aiken divided his plot into building lots and re-sold them, becoming a founder of the Village of Greenbush, which was incorporated in 1815. Aiken built his home in 1816, and it was considered the finest on the east side of the Hudson. The house is now privately owned.

Beverwyck Manor
Washington Ave., Rensselaer, behind Franciscan Heights Senior Community

William Patterson Van Rensselaer [1805-1872] was a son of Stephan Van Rensselaer III, and inherited of most of Rensselaer County. William built the Greek Revival Beverwyck Manor in 1839. Beverwyck was known as the East Manor (the Van Rensselaer's West Manor in Albany has been demolished). The manor was purchased by Paul Forbes in 1850 as a county seat, and became known as Old Forbes Manor. It remained mostly unoccupied through 1910, and was finally sold to the Order of Franciscans for St. Anthony-on-the-Hudson Seminary.

Clark-Dearstyne-Miller Inn
11-13 Forbes Ave, Rensselaer, NY

This hotel and tavern was built around 1791 near the North Ferry landing in Bath-On-Hudson, on a parcel granted to Jeremiah Clark by Stephen Van Rensselaer III. The second floor was originally a ballroom, but was later divided as living quarters for the tavern keeper. The guest rooms were in the half-story above. From 1839-1867, James Dearstyne was the owner/proprietor. The Dearstynes ran it until the 1890's, when it was the Dearstyne-Miller Hotel. It continued as the Miller Hotel until the 1920's, and was a neighborhood tavern from the 1950's to it's abandonment in the 1980's.

Patroon Agent's House and Office
15 Forbes Ave, Rensselaer, NY

The Casparus Pruyn House and Office was near the former ferry slip and the Dearstyne Inn. It was completed in 1839 for the rent collection agent of William Van Rensselaer, son of the last Patroon of Rensselaerwyck. Efforts by this generation of Van Rensselaers to collect manor farmers' rents (long ignored by their father Stephen Van Rensselaer III) precipitated the Anti Rent Wars and led to the end of the patroonship system in NY. The house and office are now separately and privately owned.

W.P. Irwin Bank Building
156 Broadway, Rensselaer, NY

This High Victorian Gothic building was constructed by William P. Irwin in 1873 as the East Albany Bank & Trust Company. Irwin had an estate in Greenbush Heights, and he owned flour mills, grain elevators and a malt house. Although it was successful, the bank was closed when Irwin died (a few years after it was built) and the building became the jewelry store of Max Hackel and Son. It is now owned by Terance M. Ruso, Certified Public Accountant.

UPDATE: A member of the Facebook group said that the Irwin Building housed the National Commercial Bank and Trust Company for a time as well.

Resources:

Wikipedia's National Register of Historic Places listings in Rensselaer County, New York

National Register of Historic Places - Rensselaer County

New York State and National Registers of Historic Places Document Imaging Project [Click the Basic Criteria tab, pick Rensselaer for the County, and click the Results tab)

1907 Postcard

View of Albany, N.Y. from Rensselaer, N.Y.
Postmarked Aug. 30, 1907 from Albany.


UPDATE: Can anyone comment on the large brick building in the foreground? I wonder if it was the freight warehouse (click to zoom in). The Historical Memoir of the Western Railroad (1863) By George Bliss says that in 1848, "...a large and commodious freight house was erected at Greenbush, - seven hundred and fifty-six feet by one hundred and thirty-three, costing, with land, tracks, bridges &c., $115,000." [This is about $3M in 2009 dollars, computed by the consumer price index.]

More Holiday Lights

I got a few more photos on Tuesday night, before the rain came along to wipe out the fresh snow. (Click to enlarge)

These are from Broadway up to the high school. Even on Tue., some of the streets were still too snowy to navigate in my little car, so I got fewer pictures than I'd hoped.

Holiday Lights

Here's a bit of holiday scenery from a drive through the North End of Rensselaer, NY (mainly Farley Dr., Eastland Park, and Partridge Run).





There are many other pretty houses, but my camera does a bad job at night, and these were the only photos that came out.




You can click the photos to zoom in, but I kept the size pretty small, because of the low image quality.





Here is my favorite of the really bad photos...

Red & Green - 3rd St.

What's a Wye?

Last month I posted this photo on the Times-Union's web site, and noted that I saw the trains come just this far onto the bridge, and then reverse and back off again. I thought perhaps they were turning around. [Click images to enlarge.]

Rich was kind enough to post a comment confirming that was probably correct, as there is a track configuration called a "wye" at the east end of the bridge, which lets the train do a 3-point turn to go back down to NYC. You can see the wye on the east side of the river if you search for "livingston avenue bridge, rensselaer, ny" here on Google Maps - it looks very cool with Satellite view turned on too.

Wikipedia has a good article about the "wye" in rail terminology here, as well as a little blurb on the century-old Livingston Ave. Bridge here.

This is a rotating swing bridge owned by CSX Transportation. Here is a really nice video on YouTube, showing the bridge in action.

Here is one more view of the Livingston Avenue Bridge, taken Oct. 10 from the Corning Preserve on the Albany side of the Hudson River.

Amtrak Station

These photos were taken from the bridge behind the Albany-Rensselaer Amtrak station [525 East. St.]


Click on each photo to see a larger image.











In early Oct., I uploaded these to the Times-Union's photo gallery. Unfortunately, they resize them down to 3x4", so I thought I'd post them here as well.