You’ve heard the struggles facing the Enlarged City School District of Troy. Enrollment is down, expenses are up and there’s a budget shortfall. An old problem has come back again: Declining population leading to declining enrollment. Our efforts to Revitalize Uptown Troy include saving the only public school serving children living north of Hoosick Street. We’ve seen this before in both the Troy and Lansingburgh School Districts. I attended 4 different elementary schools as a child: 2 in Troy, 2 in Lansingburgh. Not one of those school buildings is operating as a public school today.
PS#14 (the original building) was sold to RPI in exchange for our new PS#14. School #1 now serves as the offices for Troy’s Board of Education and Superintendent of Schools. Lansingburgh Elementary is now office space as well. And then, there’s Haskell School. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this wonderful old school building is sitting vacant and unused. Hopes were to convert the old school into apartments, similar to what TAP achieved with the former School 10 in South Troy. Unfortunately, financing couldn’t be secured and the building has languished ever since. Hoodlums and graffiti artists have assaulted its structure.
Haskell sits on Sixth Avenue between 102nd and 103rd in South Lansingburgh on the boulevards. It is sometimes confusing for out-of-towners given Troy has two Sixth Avenues. Sometimes I wish they had just kept the name Vail for the Sixth Avenue in North Central.
Please continue supporting The Uptown Initiative’s efforts and those of our CDC Partners: Albany Jewish Community Center, Project Hope/Fort Edward, WSW Art Farm, Encore Theater, Palace Performing Arts Center and Hannah’s Hope. We are also pleased to welcome new CDC partner project Hope Heals.
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Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
An Old Treasured Friend
One of the things I most enjoy is history and it’s one the reasons why I love Uptown so much; It’s full of it. Here, we have an opportunity to be a living record of Troy’s contribution to the Industrial Revolution. The greatest concentration of late 19th century and early 20th century industrial structures still stand in Uptown, sadly most empty and unused. Many of our businesses are gone and we miss old treasured friends like Collins Lumbar, Wheeler Bros Brass Foundry and the Railroad. Our efforts to Revitalize Uptown Troy include seeing these industrial glories restored, renewed and re-purposed.
One of these great structures is at 669 River Street. Former home to John B. Garrett, Inc., it was originally built as the American Seal Paint Factory. I worked in this building for almost a decade and she’s a beaut. John B. Garrett, Jr. appreciated history as well. Going up to the second floor was like entering a medical museum, with a collection of antique medical equipment and instruments. The third floor was even better. One of the big vats used to make paint was still there. The elevator, sprinkler system and fire alarm all original to the building. She now sits vacant a victim of an alleged Ponzi schemer.
Mr. Garrett said that during Prohibition, Canadian booze would be smuggled in from the river through the sub-basement, carried up the elevator to the third floor and hidden in one of these vats. There would always be someone on duty next to the pull that dropped the batch into the Hudson should a raid occur. He never did say they were raided. Troy was quite the distribution center in the bootleg trade.
Please continue supporting The Uptown Initiative’s efforts and those of our CDC Partners: Albany Jewish Community Center, Project Hope/Fort Edward, WSW Art Farm, Encore Theater, Palace Performing Arts Center and Hannah’s Hope.
Click here to sign up for The Uptown Initiative’s email list and to receive my daily “Uptown Tidbits” email.
One of these great structures is at 669 River Street. Former home to John B. Garrett, Inc., it was originally built as the American Seal Paint Factory. I worked in this building for almost a decade and she’s a beaut. John B. Garrett, Jr. appreciated history as well. Going up to the second floor was like entering a medical museum, with a collection of antique medical equipment and instruments. The third floor was even better. One of the big vats used to make paint was still there. The elevator, sprinkler system and fire alarm all original to the building. She now sits vacant a victim of an alleged Ponzi schemer.
Mr. Garrett said that during Prohibition, Canadian booze would be smuggled in from the river through the sub-basement, carried up the elevator to the third floor and hidden in one of these vats. There would always be someone on duty next to the pull that dropped the batch into the Hudson should a raid occur. He never did say they were raided. Troy was quite the distribution center in the bootleg trade.
Please continue supporting The Uptown Initiative’s efforts and those of our CDC Partners: Albany Jewish Community Center, Project Hope/Fort Edward, WSW Art Farm, Encore Theater, Palace Performing Arts Center and Hannah’s Hope.
Click here to sign up for The Uptown Initiative’s email list and to receive my daily “Uptown Tidbits” email.
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