Social History

Policing in New York City: A New History Published

October 4, 2021 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.

As debates about reducing funding for U.S. police forces continue, the new book Policing the Big Apple: The Story of the NYPD (The University of Chicago Press, 2021) by Jules Stewart offers an enlightening historical overview of one of the world’s largest metropolitan contingents: the New York City Police Department. [Read more…] about Policing in New York City: A New History Published

The Poestenkill: Mountains, Waterfalls and Waterworks

September 26, 2021 by John Warren 7 Comments

On the Hudson River along upstate New York’s eastern border, within the natural boundaries of river and mountains, lies the rough rectangle of Rensselaer County. It is bisected by the Poesten Kill,* a powerful stream that scours its way from the mountains to the sea level flats of the Hudson River at Troy.

The Poesten Kill splits the county across the middle into two pieces of roughly equal size, north and south. From its source at about 1,600 feet in the Petersburg Mountains, to the village which bears its name, it’s a smaller steam tumbling over forested rocks and ledges, and forming pools and small waterfalls. At the village of Poestenkill it begins to meander across a 10-mile wide plateau of farmlands before falling abruptly through a series of steep gorges at Troy to settle into the Hudson. [Read more…] about The Poestenkill: Mountains, Waterfalls and Waterworks

Jermain Family Philanthropy Helped Shape The Capital District

September 20, 2021 by Peter Hess 1 Comment

John Jordan left Edinburgh, Scotland in 1755 arriving in White Plains, colony of New York, the same year. Edinburgh had been the family home since Jordan’s father and grandfather fled France for Scotland following the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of French Huguenots in the late 1600s. John struck out on his own and decided to immigrate to America.

John married Mary Ann Daniels, a young woman of Dutch descent, and in 1758 they had a son, John Jordan, Jr. With the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, John Jordan, Sr. and his wife left New York and helped found the loyalist colony of St. John, New Brunswick, just across the Maine border. Their 19-year-old son, John Jr., stayed behind. [Read more…] about Jermain Family Philanthropy Helped Shape The Capital District

Saratoga’s Kensington Hotel: From Sanitarium to Skidmore

August 24, 2021 by Bill Orzell Leave a Comment

Visitors from every part of the world have made their way to Saratoga Springs for myriad reasons, but mainly for their health or their hippic interest.

They have been accommodated in fabulous structures, but unfortunately most of these great hotels have been lost. In their time they established a superior level of service, dedicated to sybarite satisfaction which help make Saratoga a resort destination. They mainly stood along Broadway.

The Kensington Hotel however, stood away from the others. Its location was on fashionable Union Avenue, the splendid thoroughfare which reaches from the village to Saratoga Lake, with the race track in between. [Read more…] about Saratoga’s Kensington Hotel: From Sanitarium to Skidmore

Got A Story From Griffiss Air Force Base? History Project Seeks Participants

August 14, 2021 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The Rome Historical Society is looking for community members willing to share their memories of Griffiss Air Force Base in a video interview.

Constructed in 1941-42 under the supervision of future Manhattan Project engineer Kenneth Nichols. It was finally named in 1948 to honor Buffalo native and 1922 West Point graduate Lt. Col. Townsend Griffiss (1900–1942). Griffiss was the first U.S. airman killed on duty in Europe during the Second World War. His B-24 Liberator bomber was shot down by friendly fire over the English Channel. [Read more…] about Got A Story From Griffiss Air Force Base? History Project Seeks Participants

Slavery & Freedom in French Louisiana

August 11, 2021 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

The story of freedom in colonial New Orleans and Louisiana pivoted on the choices black women made to retain control of their bodies, families, and futures.

How did black women in colonial Louisiana navigate French and Spanish black and slavery codes to retain control of their bodies, families, and futures? [Read more…] about Slavery & Freedom in French Louisiana

Adirondack Gentrification: Resortification & Urbanization (Part 6)

August 5, 2021 by Eliza Jane Darling Leave a Comment

Rural gentrification has appeared in almost every region, from Big Sky territory to the Rockies to Prairie Country to New England to the American South. Outside the United States, it has been documented in Spain, Turkey, Sweden, New Zealand, France, Canada, Ireland, Japan, Taiwan, and especially Britain.

While the details vary from place to place, most gentrifying rural communities suffer the same consequences: the displacement of the rural working class, the decline of available space for social reproduction, and the aging of the vestigial population. Yet if rural America is united in its symptoms, it is divided by its disease. [Read more…] about Adirondack Gentrification: Resortification & Urbanization (Part 6)

Adirondack Gentrification: Seasonal Development & The Rent Sink (Part 5)

August 4, 2021 by Eliza Jane Darling Leave a Comment

In the spring of 1989, the Adirondack working class received an alarming wake-up call in the unlikely form of Robin Leach. The Adirondacks, according to the garrulous host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, were a hidden jewel just waiting to be discovered by travelers with a taste for wilderness and the purchasing power to claim a slice of nature-at-its-moneyed-best for their very own. The show had even gone so far as to list the remote and rugged mountains as an “upcoming hot spot for jet-setters” in its “Guide to the World’s Best Places.”

Leach’s prediction had been well borne out by the mid-1990s. “Rough It Like A Rockefeller,” proclaimed one strapline in the travel section of the Wall Street Journal, while an article in Vanity Fair encouraged readers to go “camp hopping in the haute Adirondacks” and Travel and Leisure billed it as a place where “the notion of escape endures.” Such articles, liberally sprinkled with posh photographic layouts depicting the rich at play in tastefully rustic lodges nestled on the shores of gleaming silver lakes, recommended such accommodations as The Point in Lake Placid, where guests could take in the clean mountain air for a mere $1300 a night.

Beemers had been traded for sport utility vehicles, and the Adirondacks, it appeared, had become an exclusive retreat for well-heeled consumers seeking respite from their taxing cosmopolitan lives in the newly fashionable wilderness. [Read more…] about Adirondack Gentrification: Seasonal Development & The Rent Sink (Part 5)

Adirondack Gentrification: Depletion (The Devil’s Due, Part 3)

August 3, 2021 by Eliza Jane Darling Leave a Comment

In the autumn of 2015, the Adirondack Research Consortium in partnership with the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government held a panel to discuss the diminishing demography of the Adirondacks. The all-male affair it convened to lead this conversation was typically partisan, casually excluding the perspectives, positions and participation of those primarily burdened with the labor of Adirondack propagation.

While this august assembly of middle-aged men sat pondering the problem with pie charts and furrowed brows, back home in the mountains, the keystone species of the demographic ecosystem – Adirondack mothers – got on with the business of raising children in a climate that is notably inimical to their interests even within the auspices of nation that is generally hostile to the working conditions of those who shoulder the bulk of the responsibility for social reproduction. [Read more…] about Adirondack Gentrification: Depletion (The Devil’s Due, Part 3)