All Over Albany

Getting reacquainted with Schenectady's Stockade

I'm passionate about my Albany neighborhood. It takes a lot for me to imagine living somewhere else.

But you know what? The Stockade's enough to make me wonder.

When a 200-year-old Schenectady Stockade home recently lost part of its front wall, apparently a victim of water damage from melting snow and ice, it made me consider that I hadn't been over there in a while. A two-hour walk in the neighborhood's springtime sunlight made me remember: The Stockade is one of the Capital Region's superlative neighborhoods. It's a jewel. And it should be a source of pride for our whole region.

This is where Schenectady began, as a cluster of houses behind a wooden stockade in the 1660s. The neighborhood was burned in the massacre of 1690 (Maeve McEneny wrote a bit about that for AOA last year). But Stockade residents rebuilt. About a hundred years on, Washington stopped by. Lafayette visited, too. People have lived here continuously for more than 300 years.

The Stockade was New York's first designated historic district. More than 40 houses are over 200 years old. The neighborhood association calls it the oldest residential neighborhood in the country, and quotes the National Park Service's assessment: "the highest concentration of historic period homes in the country."

But you don't even have to like history to love the Stockade. Just enjoy beautiful spaces. The neighborhood has an intimate scale. Graceful houses line quiet streets. Walled gardens tantalize.

Of course, if you come in the fall for the Stockade Walkabout, you can tour some of these homes. But don't wait till then for a wander: This is a good time to see the Stockade, before the trees fill out and the leaves get in the way.

St. George's Episcopal Church, 1762.

Call up a walking tour map on your phone and let it guide you. The Schenectady County Historical Society, in the neighborhood at 32 Washington Ave., has some walking tour brochures geared to kids; but they're out of copies of the regular walking tour flier and are waiting for a reprint.

Alternately, bring a guide to American Architecture (for its portable size, I like this one) and get some practice identifying early American types. You could hardly find a neighborhood more suited to it. Dutch colonial, Federal, Greek Revival, Gothic? All here. And more.

Bring a camera and create some art for your desktop. Heck, you can just bring a cup of coffee and wander with no goal higher than your own pleasure.

But you'd better plan to bring your own coffee. Arthur's, a neighborhood fixture for most of the 20th century, is closed. The fact that there's been a market in that building, 35 North Ferry, since 1795 makes its vacancy seem especially wrong. Let's hope it's temporary.

The Front Street home that partially collapsed last month.

Water damage in the Stockade is not something new. Some of the houses have beautiful Mohawk River views from their back windows -- but once in a while, the river view comes even closer than that. There have been times Stockade residents have left their homes by rowboat.

But no matter what comes, this neighborhood will, I think, find a way to survive.

Walking the Stockade this week made me recall my mother's reaction some time ago, the first time I brought her over to the Stockade after years of visiting me in Albany: "Why have you been hiding Schenectady from me? Schenectady is wonderful!"

And you know, the Stockade is such an incredible neighborhood that it's hard to argue with her.