Tracing the History of Your House Can Be Fun…Especially When Your House Is a PokéStop

It’s no secret that the staff at SCHS is hooked on the Pokémon Go craze (see this Daily Gazette article, this piece on Channel 6, and this article on Bloomberg.com.) For me, the game touches on a nostalgic nerve as I played Pokémon when I was younger. It then combines that nostalgia with another of my favorite things, history. Many of the pokéstops in the area are places of historical significance and if you have ever walked around the Stockade you would know that many of the buildings have markers stating their historical significance. We’re hoping that by having these landmarks, buildings, and other historic sites as pokéstops, people will start asking questions about the interesting and sometimes weird history of Schenectady. SCHS has been hosting impromptu pokéstop walking tours of the Stockade to try and bring history to the forefront of the game and explain the background behind some of the more prominent pokéstops and gyms in the neighborhood.

When walking around the Stockade on my lunch break I try to take a look many of the historic markers on the houses around the neighborhood. One potential positive of the game is that it could get people to think about their neighborhood in a new light. Judging by the popularity of our tour and similar ones in other historical areas, there are people playing the game who are interested in learning about local history.

One that I just never really seemed to notice was on the corner of Front St. and Washington Ave. which also happens to be the closest pokéstop to 32 Washington (well, besides 32 Washington itself). It wasn’t until our pokéstop tour that I noticed that this house has a marker that states that it was the home of blacksmith Aaron Dickinson. But that’s not all! It also has quite a political history being the home of Schenectady mayor J. Teller Schoolcraft and John Prince, the merchant and Assemblyman of Albany County who Princetown was named after.  

Whether your house is a pokéstop or not, tracing the history of your house can be interesting as you piece together the lives of people who lived in your house before you. It can also give you more of a connection to your neighborhood as you learn more about the people who lived there in the past and what the neighborhood looked like. The changing styles of architecture in your area also tell the story of how your neighborhood changed over the years. You also never know what sort of information you will turn up during your search. You may not find all the answers to the questions you’re looking for, but starting your house history can be very rewarding.

The Schenectady County Historical Society will be hosting a house history workshop on August 13^th from 2pm to 4pm to help you get started with your house history research. After the workshop, you’ll be able to use the historical society’s library to use some of the resources that you learned about in the workshop. This workshop is free for members of the historical society and $5.00 for non-members.