New York Heritage Collection Highlight: Schenectady, NY Street Scenes

Our newest collection on New York Heritage is Schenectady Street Scenes which was funded by a grant from the Capital District Library Council. This collection is pretty self-explanatory in that it has photos of the offices, factories, residences, trains, and other buildings all along Schenectady's streets. These photos give a glimpse of Schenectady throughout the years and you can really get a sense of how the city changed over time. This post will highlight just a fraction of the photos in this collection. You can view all of the photos in this collection by following this link to our New York Heritage page. A special thanks goes out to library volunteer Angela Matyi. Angela did a great job scanning the photos and entering all the data into New York Heritage for this collection.

A hunter in the Bowery woods near Summit and Paige ca. 1890. These woods were a favorite spot for hunters, picnickers, walkers, and those who just wanted a nice view of the city.

How could I mention the view of Schenectady from the Bowery woods without actually showing the view? In this photo of Schenectady from Summit Avenue you can see the construction of the United Methodist Church close to the middle and the old Schenectady Armory on the right as well as smoke from the city's various industrial pursuits in the background.

Look close in the first photo and you can make out a familiar building. Finding out when and where this photo was taken is a bit tricky as neither Johnson Street, nor Terrace Place exist anymore and its is a bit more developed than it was in this photo. This area was redeveloped in the 1950s so we think the date of the photo is somewhere between the opening of City Hall in 1931 and the 1950s. We were able to figure out that it was taken close to where the Bechtel Plant currently is. This portion of the 1900 Sanborn map shows the intersection of Johnson and Terrace, as well was some of the buildings that were in the area.

Also in this collection are photos of storm damage around Schenectady. The first photo shows huge chunks of ice from a major ice storm in 1914. The second shows a battered silo on Maxon Road.

The raising of Schenectady's railroads was a great boon for public safety. These two photos show the before and after of the raising of the rails. In the early 1900s, pedestrian deaths and injuries caused by trains were steadily increasing and by 1907 the city decided to do something about it. State Street was one of the most dangerous and as seen in the first photo from the 1900s, very busy. Adding trains to the mix made the street dangerous and often congested. The second photo shows the opening of the rail bridge on State Street. Now pedestrians could freely cross State Street, all they had to worry about were trolleys, horses, and the ever increasing amount of cars on the roads.

Speaking of trolleys (and streets that don't exist anymore), this great photo from around 1915 shows a mix of trolleys, cars, and pedestrians on Villa Road. Villa Road was the portion of  current day Broadway that ran from Weaver Street to the top of Bellevue Hill.

Connected to the last photo is this peaceful scene on Bellevue Hill from the late 1800s. From dirt roads to cars andelectric trolleys, these two photos really shows how Schenectady progressed.