History, Natural History & the Arts
New York State’s Empire State Development Corporation’s proposed Pennsylvania Station Civic and Land Use Project (the “Penn Area Plan”) would demolish multiple blocks of historic buildings in the vicinity of Penn Station in Manhattan.
All told, over 40 historic buildings and structures stand to be lost while displacing thousands of residents and businesses. [Read more…] about Under Threat: The Penn Station Neighborhood in Manhattan
On September 27th, 2025, it will be two hundred years ago that the world’s first public railway, known as the Stockton & Darlington (S&DR), was opened in north-east England.
As well as carrying coal, the train offered space for six hundred passengers, most of them traveling in wagons, but some distinguished guests were allocated a seat in a specially designed carriage called The Experiment. [Read more…] about Railroads, The Spuyten Duyvil Disaster & Faustian Legend
When the sidewheel steamboat Horicon II was launched on Lake George in 1910, she was both the longest and fastest passenger vessel to ever sail the lake. Over the next 29 years, she would be used for transportation of cargo and residents around the lake, as well as cruises for tourists.
The construction of a road on the west side of the lake, as well as the region’s rapidly increasing mobility with the introduction of the automobile, brought a dramatic decline in passengers. In response to this trend, in 1932 the Delaware & Hudson Railroad, owners of the steamboats on the lake through the Lake George Steamboat Company, announced that they would not be running boats that year. [Read more…] about The Showboat Era on Lake George 1933-1937
Hand-built in the mid-1800s, the 4,000-foot-long Piermont Pier on the Hudson River in Rockland County was once a terminus of the longest railroad in the world – the Erie Railroad.
Hampered by rules about railroads crossing state lines, the Erie built a pier nearly a mile long across the marshy bay at Piermont and out to the deeper parts of the Hudson River, where steamboats could pick up passengers and take them on to New York City. [Read more…] about Hudson River Railroad & Steamboat History: Piermont Pier
Hudson Highlands residents Barry and Mary Jean (MJ) Ross have donated their collection of Hudson River postcards to the Putnam History Museum.
The collection is comprised of 240 distinct early 20th century postcards with scenes of the Hudson River Valley – and related views, activities, landmarks, and landscapes – from New York Harbor to the Adirondacks. [Read more…] about Putnam History Museum Acquires Hudson River Postcard Collection
The St. Lawrence & Adirondack Railroad, also known as the Mohawk & Malone – eventually owned by the New York Central and called the Adirondack Line or the Adirondack Railroad ran directly through the Adirondacks from Herkimer (near Utica) to Malone connecting the rail lines along the Mohawk River to the Main Trunk Line running into Montreal. The line is often attributed to William Seward Webb, but it was the men who actually built the line that are the subject of this essay.
On March 29, 1892 a Boston Globe article titled “Labor’s Slaves in the Adirondacks” reported that Utica “resembled Washington during war times, hundreds of penniless and destitute Negroes are camped out tonight in the temporary places of shelter given them, and the citizens of Utica are consulting as to the best means of returning them to their homes.”
The Globe told readers that all night, “runaway slaves” had been coming into town. One hundred and fifty of them, mostly black laborers from the Deep South, but some recently arrived European immigrants as well. [Read more…] about “Labor’s Slaves in the Adirondacks”: Building the Adirondack Railroad
The New York State Departments of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and Transportation (DOT), in cooperation with the Office of General Services (OGS), have announced the completion of the transfer of jurisdiction for a 34-mile segment of the Remsen-Lake Placid Travel Corridor. [Read more…] about Adirondack Rail Trail Design & Construction Starting
By the 1850s, the horse-drawn streetcars on rails had become a more common mode of transportation, competing with the increasingly obsolete enclosed horse-drawn omnibuses in the city of New York. The streetcars regularly barred access to their service on the basis of race and owners and drivers easily refused service to passengers of African descent and omnibuses became the default mode for people of color.
On Sunday, July 16, 1854, Elizabeth Jennings boarded a streetcar of the Third Avenue Railroad Company at the corner of Pearl and Chatham Streets in Manhattan on her way to the First Colored Congregational Church, where she was an organist. The conductor ordered her off, instructing her to take a omnibus. When she refused, the conductor, with the help of a New York police officer, removed her by force. [Read more…] about Elizabeth Jennings: America’s First Freedom Rider (Virtual Event)
As control of the American economy became increasingly centralized in trusts located on Wall Street after the Civil War, and the wealth of men like J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller grew exponentially, there developed an increasing backlash against such concentrations of wealth. In the 1880s, through an investigation by a committee of the New York State Legislature, Americans became aware that Standard Oil secretly controlled a number of supposedly competing oil companies. By 1910 almost 90% of the world’s oil supply was controlled from the company’s headquarters at 26 Broadway in Manhattan. [Read more…] about Trust Busting: William Jennings Bryan & Theodore Roosevelt
The period after the Civil War was one of significant economic and technological expansion in the nation and one in which corporations headquartered in Lower Manhattan and Wall Street would obtain a significant hegemony over the American economy.
This was a time in which individual entrepreneurs were running private businesses located on Wall Street. Men such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan were major figures in the country and attained economic power and wealth on a scale previously unknown in United States history.
Much of their wealth was derived exploiting natural resources and technological innovations (notably steam engines, railroads, and oil). It was also largely dependent on the economy’s western expansion and African-American and immigrant labor. These men, who some call “Titans of Industry” and others “Robber Barons,” generally consolidated independent businesses into national enterprises, large monopolies, and multinational corporations. Many of these were headquartered in Lower Manhattan. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Gould, and Morgan