The
Schuyler-Stanford-Ingersoll Mansion at the apex of Balltown Road and
State
Street in Niskayuna
photo by
Saving our history
from the wrecking ball
BY
EDWIN D.
REILLY, JR.
For The Sunday
Gazette
Could the name Eliphalet once have been as common as Kevin and Scott
are now?
The reason I wonder is that while most of us know that Nott Street,
Terrace,
and Memorial are named for Union’s first president, Eliphalet Nott, it
is also
the case that Balltown Road (Ball’s town road) is named for a certain
Eliphalet
Ball. Ball came to this area in 1771, and once he got his bearings,
headed
north to Saratoga County to found Ball’s town, a name that soon
thereafter
elided to Ballston.
The corner of
Balltown Road and
State Street was once the center of a very large tract of land that was
farmed
by its first non-Native American owner John Duncan in about 1760. He
called the
home he built on it The Hermitage. Through subdivision over the
next 210
years, the farm was reduced to just a few acres, the rest being used
for such
things as the Stanford Golf Course, which became Mohawk Mall in 1970
and Mohawk
Commons quite recently, the O.D. Heck campus, and many many
homes.
In a meticulously researched paper written in 1984, local historian (and former Niskayuna High School Principal) Frank Taormina traced ownership of what remains of the farm through ten transactions from 1760 to July 2, 1923, when the mansion built upon it became the Ingersoll Home for Aged Men. Along the way, a fascinating cast of characters either lived on that site or had something to do with it. Included are two distantly related Vroomans, both of whom became
In 1839, the heirs of Harmanus Schuyler sold the property to Lemuel P. Hand. Another helping Hand, the aptly named Learned Hand (1872-1961), born in Albany and almost certainly a direct or parallel descendant, became the most famous judge of his era.
The first of three
Stanfords to
own the property, Josiah, bought it from John I. Vrooman in 1859 and
called it Locust
Grove. Josiah’s son Leland became President of the Central Pacific
Railroad, Governor and later senator from California, and founded
Stanford
University in his spare time.
What is now the Ingersoll Home was, along with all of Niskayuna, part
of Albany
County until our county of Schenectady was spun off in 1809. Thus in a
scant
four years, Niskayuna will celebrate its bicentennial. But there is
great risk
that it will do so without its most historic remaining edifice, the
Ingersoll.
We must not let that happen.
The risk stems from
the fact that the Trustees of the Ingersoll, for good and
sufficient economic reasons I’m sure, want to sell the property and
move to a
site on Consaul Road near O.D. Heck. And since the parcel is zoned
commercial,
a new owner might want to demolish the mansion, history and all.
Another
humungous drug store we do not need.
Frank, as I am, is a Trustee of the Schenectady County Historical
Society
(SCHS). At our monthly meeting of November 16, the Board of SCHS passed
a
unanimous resolution that will result in an urgent request to the Town
Board
and Planning Board of the Town of Niskayuna and to the Trustees of the
Ingersoll that they take immediate cooperative steps to protect the
property
and its parklike setting. How? One
possibility is
that the Ingersoll will agree to sell the property only to a developer
who will
agree not to change the façade of the mansion or to pave over an
inordinate
amount of its green space. As a multiple-residence facility that
antedates town
zoning laws, the mansion has legal though nonconforming usage with
respect to a
commercial zone, a right that could be passed to someone who would
convert its
interior to some very nice apartments. On the Town’s part, it could, if
it acts
very very quickly, rezone the property to
a historic
district with limited usages permitted,
only those
that preserve the ambiance and architecture of the site.
Our county, and the city in particular,
does not have
a good track record with regard to preservation of historic buildings. Literally. The tracks of our classic union
station may still
be there, but the stately union station that they once served has been
replaced
by a black box. (Albany, in contrast, converted its even more majestic
union
station to a bank) And all that remains of Nott Terrace High School is
a plaque
in front of Friendly’s that tells us that it was demolished in 1974
while we
were distracted by Watergate.
Of course, our most
tragic historic loss was that of the stately residence of
Charles Proteus Steinmetz which once stood near Groot's
Kill on Wendell Avenue. Despite the fact that engineer Herbert Hoover,
before
he became president, had raised the then princely sum of $25,000 for
its
preservation, the house was demolished in the 1930s, a victim of
deferred
maintenance during the depression. Christ Hunter, archivist of the
Schenectady
Museum and another of our SCHS trustees, tells me that the bricks from
the
Steinmetz house were carted to Niskayuna and used to build the
apartments
behind the Co-Op. If the apartments are ever demolished, we should
re-salvage
the bricks and use them to rebuild the Steinmetz home on its original
site.
One building that didn’t get away from us is the stately home of
Steinmetz’s
colleague Ernst Berg, chairman of the Union College Electrical
Engineering
department for 30 years in the early 1900s. See http://mel.simmons.org/realtyplot/chap10.html
for a description of his home at 1336 Lowell Road. Very appropriately,
the
house is now home to a Trustee of the Schenectady Museum.
Not surprisingly, a great number of large American companies or major
components thereof began life in a garage or, if old enough, in their
precursor, a carriage house. Hewlett-Packard,
Microsoft, and
Apple are examples of the former, and the GE Research Laboratory of the
latter.
That carriage house can be seen as it was in 1905 at www.businessweek.com/innovation/popup/6.html.
Sadly, it is long gone, replaced by a restaurant. In its heyday at that
site,
Ernst Berg worked long hours alongside his mentor, Steinmetz. There
should be a
historic marker there, at Erie Boulevard and Liberty, but there isn’t.
So I’m
going to ask the owner of the restaurant to change its name, ever so
slightly,
to Berger King.
Edwin D.
Reilly, Jr., President
of the Schenectady County Historical Society, lives in