Helena R. Goines, Albany’s First African American Teacher

Circa 1880

For many decades the first African American teacher in the Albany School District was thought to be Harriet Lewis Van Vranken who began teaching in 1915, and who subsequently became the first African American social worker in the city. However, new information has come to light and we’ve found that Helena R. Goines started teaching in the district two decades earlier in 1895. We couldn’t have corroborated what we found without the help of School District staff; Alicia Abdul – Librarian, Albany High School and Paula Tibbitts, Assistant to the Superintendent.

In the late part of the 19th century African American women began to emerge as a force to be reckoned with. Some doors opened and others were pushed open. Increasingly their voices were heard, and they entered fields previously denied to them; education, law, medicine, and science. They began to organize and mobilize to create institutions to serve their communities, including day nurseries, old age homes, and hospitals. Helena Goines would become part of this group.

Helena was born in 1868, likely in New York City (because her father, John Butler, is listed in NYS Civil War registration records in the City in 1863.) John was probably from the Mohawk Valley (Schoharie or Oneida County), and her mother Eliza Goines Butler from Pennsylvania. It’s quite possible John and Elizabeth met in Philadelphia where she lived and he had family. The family first appears in Albany in the City Directory and the 1875 Census living at 352 Hamilton St. between Dove St. and Lark St. – John Butler, Eliza Butler, Jim Butler and Nellie (Helena) Butler. When Helena began school, she would have attended an integrated school – probably District School 16 at 201 Hudson Ave. below Swan St. It was the same school building which her brother Jim, five years older, had attended, but until Fall, 1873 when Albany integrated its schools, it had been the Wilberforce School, a segregated school for African American children.

Circa 1880

Within a couple of years, the family moved to the 100 block of Third St. in Arbor Hill and the children attended attend District School 22 just around the block on Second St. When Helena was about 11 her father died. Mrs. Butler and the children moved to Elm St. between Dove St. and Swan St. Around the time of their father’s death there appears to be have been a major family break. Jim and Helena started using their mother’s maiden name, Goines, as their surname – which they would retain for the rest of their lives. At the time of his death John Butler appears to have been living apart of from his family. (Further evidence of the break is John Butler ‘s burial in Albany Rural Cemetery, while Mrs. Butler, Helena and Jim are interred elsewhere.)

Albany High School

Eagle St., corner of Steuben St.

In 1883 Helena passed the admission test for Albany High School, then located on the corner of Eagle St. and Steuben St. (The County Courthouse is there today.) Only a decade before Arabella Chapman, older sister of Helena’s best friend Harriet, was the first African American child admitted to the High School in 1873 when Albany schools were integrated. Helena graduated in 1887 from the English Division from the High School (we think she may have only been the third African American to graduate in that first decade.) She then pursued a yearlong course at the High School and was awarded a Graduate Teaching Certificate in 1888. (Again this may have been a first.) Her accomplishment was so significant woman it was reported in the New York Age a newspaper that focused on African American life and accomplishments across the country.)

Teaching in Delaware

In 1889 Helena became a teacher in a “colored” school in the Wilmington, Delaware segregated school district, where she remained for at least 4 years. (Wilmington seems to be an odd choice, but, based on some old census data, quite possibly some of her mother’s family may have lived in Wilmington.)

Return to Albany

In 1895 Helena returned to Albany, becoming part of the corps of substitute teachers for the school district. In 1896 she was appointed to a permanent position in School 14 at 70 Trinity Place. The following year she appears in District records as a teacher in School 12 on the corner of Washington Ave. and Robin St. Helena remained at School 12 for about a year.

1894

1894

Queens

In Fall, 1898 she took a position in Jamaica, Queens at a much enhanced the salary. Jamaica was still a segregated school district. It wasn’t until late 1900 when Governor Theodore Roosevelt signed legislation that prohibited children of any race from being excluded from any school in New York State.

Her brother and mother soon joined her in Queens. Helena continued to teach in Queens schools in Jamaica and Flushing for another 25 years or so.

Newspaper accounts of the time document Helena’s activities among a group of African American women who were creating new social and political institutions for the Black community in New York City and the country, including the wives of W.E. B, Dubois, one of the founders of the NAACP, and Mrs. Adam Clayton Powell, wife of the immensely influential reverend of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Manhattan. These women were the supporters of the first “Colored” YWCA in New York City, and the Utopia Neighborhood Club that supported the development of what is today’s Urban League. They were the women who were members of the National Association of Colored Women, a driving force behind the activism of African American women across the U.S. at the local level. Many were supporters of the African American contingent of the Equal Suffrage Party in New York City that worked to secure the vote for women.

Helena passed away in Queens in 1944. She’s buried in Ballston Spa Cemetery, along with her brother Jim who died in 1906 and her mother who passed away in 1922.

Note: There is compelling evidence that Helena was also Native American. Her mother’s death certificate lists her race as Native American. When Helena died there was a single heir, Jennie Brock in Philadelphia. Jennie identified as Native American in the 1940 census. It appears that the surnames Goins/Goines is closely associated with the Native American population in Philadelphia dating back to the early 1800s.

Julie O’Connor M.L.S

(Special thanks to Lorie Wies, Local History Librarian, Saratoga Springs Library who found the original newspaper article that indicated Helena received a teaching certificate.)

Copyright 2021 Julie O’Connor

The History of 23 Dove St. in Albany; Women’s Rights

From Google Earth 2019

Recently the owners of Bongiorno’s restaurant at 23 Dove St. (on the corner of Spring St.) sold the business. (Don’t panic .. it’s still open -under new ownership; the folks who own the Dove and Deer, just across the street at Dove and State Streets.) A question came up. How old is the building and has there been a restaurant in that location for 130 years as some think? So we decided to do some digging. Like most Albany stories, we uncovered some fascinating stuff.

from Google Earth 2019

As far as we can tell 23 Dove St. was built in the early 1850s – which meshes with the age of the Dove & Deer, built in 1854. By the early 1850s Albany was bursting at the seams. In 1840, the population was 34,000 – within a decade in 1850 it was 51,000, and Albany was the 10th largest city in the country. The city pushed rapidly north, west and south from its core. Wagons carrying lumber trundled through the streets from the barges unloaded at the docks, barrels of nails from foundries on the River and bricks made in the huge brick works that ringed what is now Lincoln Park.

The Coley Sisters and Their School

We believe 23 Dove was initially used as a residence, but in 1864 it became the “Misses Coley’s School”. There were 3 Coley sisters who became teachers – Adeline, Jane and Julia – originally from Duanesburg. They were the daughters of Amy and David Coley, who fought in the War of 1812, and granddaughters of Joseph Coley, who came from Westchester County and fought in the American Revolution.

The Coley sisters graduated from the NYS Normal School in 1846, 1850 and 1853 respectively. (The Normal School is now the University at Albany.)

In 1In the early 1860s we find the sisters teaching in public schools ; one is an assistant principal School 7 on Canal St. (now Sheridan Ave.) and another assistant principal in School 5 on North Pearl (north of Clinton Ave.) They’re all living with their widowed mother at 220 State St.

In 1864 the sisters took a risk and made a radical change, opening the Misses Coley School (known as the Coley Cottage School) at 23 Dove St. * (It appears 220 State St was sold to acquire 23 Dove.) The school was quite successful and became a fixture in Albany for the next 40 years or so, forming the minds of several generations of young middle and upper class Albanians who would dominate business, politics and society until the mid 20th century.

The sisters were models of the Protestant ethic and rectitude (piety, charity, hard work, diligence, moderation in all things and good works). They attended the Pearl Street Baptist Church on North Pearl (the Ten Eyck Plaza is there today), until it was demolished and then re-constituted in a new building at 275 State St. as the Emmanuel Baptist Church (where they were Sunday school teachers).

Pearl Street Bapt8st Church

The Coleys were lifelong and very active members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, not from a moral sense, but from what they believed was a practical view… alcohol lead to domestic violence and child abuse, and often reduced families to poverty.

Women’s Suffrage Headquarters

But don’t get the wrong idea about the sisters; they were hardly pliable , not meek and mild. They were dedicated women’s suffrage activists when such women’s rights agitation wasn’t at all fashionable. When the NYS Legislature gave women the right to vote in school elections in 1880 Adeline and Jane were among the 2 dozen or so Albany women to cast their ballots, much to the shock of many.

Adeline was a member of the Albany Woman’s Suffrage Society (treasurer at one point) in the 1880s, and its successor, the Albany Political Equality Club. The Club’s meetings were held at 23 Dove St. (its headquarters) in the first five years of the 20th century.

The Coleys were also shrewd business women. They acquired property – on Dove St., upper State St. (315 served as a Boarding House for female Normal School students) and Hamilton St., and yet continued to serve as trustees of the Open Door Mission -for destitute genteel women (mostly elderly teachers) and the Teacher’s Relief Society.

Their mother Amy died in 1882 and sadly Jane passed later that year (her cemetery card lists the cause of death of as exhaustion). But Julia and Adeline carried on with the school. Adeline passed away in 1916; Julia died in 1927 at the age of 97. Julia’s estate (including 23 Dove St.,) was left to her great nephew, William Taylor. In 1931 he and his wife opened the Ye Old Coley Cottage Restaurant.

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The Princess Pat Tea Room

In 1933 the restaurant was purchased by Charles and Margaret Pepeski, and they changed the name to the Princess Pat Tea Room (and no, we have no idea why).

The Princess Pat operated at 23 Dove until in the early to mid- 1970s. Many of its customers were single women who lived in the neighborhood. It was a step up from a lunch counter/soda fountain for working women and the term “tea room” signaled it was a “safe space” for women – they wouldn’t be harassed with unwanted attention. They included secretaries, teachers, professors, scientists who worked for the State, librarians, etc.. It was the go to place for meetings – for the DAR, the Junior League, and in the 1930s bridge luncheons which were all the rage.

It was a quaint place with ruffled curtains and colonial chairs. When I went with a family member in the 1950s I was told it hadn’t changed much since the 1930s. The menu I recall had a decidedly feminine vibe – welsh rarebit, salmon and chicken croquettes, cottage cheese and fruit plates, Salisbury steak, hot turkey sandwiches, and cream cheese and date nut sandwiches. (It reminded me of Schrafft’s.) The women wore tailored suits and shirtwaist dresses with good costume jewelry, hats and gloves. When I returned the early 1970s as a young adult, it was if time had stood still. The menu was almost the same, although the hats and gloves were gone, some skirts were shorter and there were several daring women in pants suits.

The next act began when the restaurant was acquired by Felix and Rosanna Bongiorno: it opened in 1978. According to a “Times Union” article the Dove & Deer owners plan on making some renovations and naming the new place Rosanna’s. According to the new owners there will be a new menu, but influenced and inspired by Bongiorno’s.

(We told you there’s always an interesting story.. all you have to do is look around the city and do a little digging.)

*Teaching was a most unkind profession in the 19th century. While almost all teachers were women, a female principal was a rarity. In the 1880s the Albany City School board enacted a rule that if a woman teacher married she had to resign. At about the same time the Cohoes Board refused hire one of my 3 great great aunts who were all teachers (very much like the Coleys); her 2 sisters were already employed in the district (that was enough already!) and the third, Amy, would be taking a job from a man who had a family. Amy went to teach in NYC and was part of group of women who tried to form a teacher’s union. (Wouldn’t you?) It’s abundantly clear why the Coley sisters struck out on their own.

Copyright 2021  Julie O’Connor

Who’s that Guy? (The Statue in front of the School District Building) – Albany’s Joseph Henry

Joseph Henry. He changed our world; he was one of the country’s first great scientists. Henry was the first American to discover the practical application of the principles of electromagnetic induction (key to most electronics), the electric motor and electric current. Without Henry there might not be any telephone, TV, refrigeration, central heating or automobiles. His work lead to the invention of all the things we depend on in 21st century everyday life.

Henry, in the statue, is holding an intensive electromagnet – the basis of most of his important scientific discoveries.

(The statue stands in front of the Joseph Henry Memorial Building that currently houses the office of the Albany City School District. In 1817 it opened as the location of the Albany Academy (for Boys). In 1971 it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The statue honoring Henry was installed in the late 1920s. )

Henry was born in 1797 on Division St. in Albany. His family was Scots Presbyterian that immigrated to America on the eve of the Revolutionary War in 1775. The family was poor and Henry’s father an alcoholic. Prior to his father’s death in 1811 Henry and his siblings were sent to live with his mother’s parents in Galway in Saratoga County. In his later teens Henry returned to the Albany and was apprenticed to a silversmith, while he dabbled with theater and considered an acting career.

Albany Academy
The story has been told that Henry stumbled across a cache of books including “Popular Lectures on Experimental Philosophy, Astronomy, and Chemistry”. Heavy reading for a half-educated teen, but it included a great description of scientific experiments. They fired his imagination and scientific curiosity. Apparently Henry was hooked and he enrolled in the Albany Academy, paying his way through a variety of jobs (he tutored Stephen Van Renssleaer IV, who would be the “last patroon”) and Henry James Sr. -father of novelist Henry James). One of his jobs, as an assistant NYS road surveyor, moved him in the direction of engineering.

Ultimately he became a professor at the Academy in 1826. Teaching at the Academy didn’t thrill him. A few years later he described his situation in a letter: “. . . My duties at the Academy are not well suited to my taste. I am engaged on an average seven hours in a day, one half of the time in teaching the higher classes in Mathematics, and the other half in the drudgery of instructing a class of sixty boys in the elements of Arithmetic.” (One of his students was Albany’s Herman Melville, the author of “Moby Dick”, who did quite well in Henry’s class, winning a prize.)

Nevertheless Henry found a little time, a little space, and a little money to do research.

Like most scientists of his day Henry was not a specialist, and explored all aspects of the physical sciences, but an initial focus was electromagnetism. He began to build electromagnets which, for the first time, were wound with many strands and layers of insulated wire. (According to legend, at one point he used silk strips torn from his wife’s petticoats for insulation.)

In one famous experiment Henry strung wire from his laboratory at the Albany Academy to the roof of the Van Vechten building on State St., just below Eagle St.). His goal was to send an electromagnetic pulse across a distance. “The cheers of the school boys on the roof of the Van Vechten building gave Henry the first intimation that his experiment had been a success.” Henry also invented the precursor of the first electric motor and identified the principles that made the telegraph possible.

In 1830 Henry married a cousin, Harriet Alexander. While he was teaching the couple lived on Columbia St. They had 4 children. Henry served on the board of trustees that over saw the first public school, the Lancaster School, in Albany (supported in part by money allocated by the Common Council) as well as the  publi financed City’s African School.

Princeton

In 1832 Henry accepted a position as professor at what is now Princeton University in New Jersey. He taught natural philosophy, geology, and architecture. At Princeton he had the opportunity continue his scientific research and published on a variety of subjects, but it was his work on basic and applied electromagnetism for which he became known. Henry thrived at Princeton. He was paid the princely sum of $1,000 annually and soon his brother-in-law, Stephen Alexander from Albany, arrived to teach astronomy.

By 1846 Henry was widely known and respected among the scientific community worldwide. (During his first European tour in 1837, he met the greatest scientific minds, including Michael Faraday, on the other side of the Atlantic.)

The Smithsonian

Consequently he was offered and accepted the position as the first secretary/director of the new Smithsonian Institution*. He continued in that position until his death. It was under his tenure that the National Museum of Natural History was established in the first Smithsonian building – known as “The Castle ”** today. (The Henry family had quarters in the east wing – every night was a “Night at the Museum”for the Henry kids. )

As awesome as the museum is, Henry wanted to be more than a museum curator. He led the Smithsonian in the support of original research and dissemination of scientific knowledge worldwide.

In 1849, Henry assumed the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (founded in Albany in 1839 by Henry’s colleagues). Henry served on the board of managers that oversaw the American exhibit at Prince Albert‘s Crystal Palace in 1851 in London. In 1867  He beacme president of the recently established National Academy of Science to further ensure that America would support science and scientific research of all kinds.

For years Henry didn’t get the recognition he deserved, but over time more has emerged about his life. Today, it’s fairly widely accepted that if Henry had patented his work he, rather than Samuel Morse, would be credited with invention of the telegraph. (Henry thought that patents inhibited the sharing of scientific information.) More light has been shed on Henry’s somewhat tense relationship with President Lincoln and his much closer relationship with Senator Jefferson Davis, who would become President of the Confederacy.***

(Henry was circumspect about his political sentiments and rarely spoke about them in public.  He abhorred slavery, but favored colonization rather than abolition and thought that a peaceful secession was better than a Civil War. In 1862 an association asked for and was granted permission to give a series of lectures in the Smithsonian auditorium, with the proviso that it be made clear that use of the Smithsonian in no way constituted an endorsement. At the end of the series all hell broke loose in the District when Henry denied Frederick Douglass the right to speak.)

Alexander Graham Bell and Henry

However, our favorite story is the relationship between Alexander Graham Bell and Henry. After Henry’s death his widow was left in reduced circumstances. As a result the Bell Telephone Co. was prepared to remove her telephone because she hadn’t paid her bill. Bell himself stepped in and gave Mrs. Henry free phone service for the rest of her life. Bell readily acknowledged that without the help of Henry he would never have succeeded with his invention. When Bell visited Henry at the Smithsonian with his preliminary work, Henry was encouraging. But when Bell told Henry that he didn’t have enough knowledge of electromagnetism to make his theory a reality Henry is said to have simply replied, “Get it”.

Joseph Henry died May 13, 1878 (his funeral was arranged by General William Sherman). He, and his wife and children, are buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in the District of Columbia. Henry’s parents were buried in the First Presbyterian Church lot in what is now Washington Park. Those remains were transferred to Albany Rural Cemetery. Henry’s siblings remained in Albany and are buried in Section 55 of Albany Rural.

*The Smithsonian Institution was founded with a bequest of James Smithson, a wealthy Englishman and amateur scientist. The Smithson funding was intended for “the increase and diffusion of knowledge”.

**The Castle was designed by James Renwick. Renwick became the pre-eminent architect of the period. He designed St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC and Trinity Episcopal Church, on Trinity Place, in Albany. Trinity Church was allowed to degenerate into a state of neglect and was demolished in 2011.

*** The Henry/Davis friendship has become the basis of myth and novels that link the Smithsonian to the Confederacy, especially lost Confederate treasury gold.

Copyright 2021  Julie O’Connor

Albany, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Great Rock Fight

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world’s largest scientific society. (AAAS has about 130,000 members and publishes the journal “Science”.) It was founded in Albany 180 years ago!

It all started on the corner Hudson Ave. and High St. (now covered by the Empire State Plaza) in the home of Ebenezer Emmons. It was there Emmons gathered a bunch of local geologists and from that small group the Association of American Geologists was formed in 1839. In 1848 the group became the AAAS.

Emmons was born in 1799 in Massachusetts and attended Williams College. He came to Albany and studied medicine at Albany Medical College and geology at the Rensselaer Institute in Troy (the precursor to RPI). He was the professor of obstetrics and natural history at the Medical College. (We love a man with diverse interests.) He also taught in Rensselaer.

But Emmons first love was geology. So at the same time he was teaching men how to deliver babies he was also the State Geologist for the northern district of the State.

Emmons named the Adirondack Mountains in 1837. (The earliest written use of a name “Rontaks” was in 1729 by a French missionary, based on the unwritten Mohawk word for the Adirondacks.) He was the first man to climb Mount Marcy.

Albany Takes Its Rocks Seriously.. Very Seriously

But Emmons is best known as “father of the Taconic System”. What the the heck is Taconic system? Emmons identified and dated the Taconic mountain range south of Albany. His findings were hugely controversial. Hugely. More than a heated argument.. and it went on for years.

The description of the “Taconic Controversy” by the late Gerald Friedman, professor at RPI, sums it up. It started as an argument with James Hall, Emmons’ assistant (who would later become the leading American paleontologist) that escalated dramatically.

“Emmons and Hall ‘dueled’ over the age of the Taconic rocks, a disagreement that became known as the “Taconic controversy”. Hall said they were younger, whereas Emmons claimed them to be older. This division led to suit and counter suit, favoring Hall. The argument over the Taconic fossils raged for many years. Ultimately Emmons was vindicated. The French scientist, Joachim Barrande, the chief student of European Paleozoic faunas, agreed with Emmons.”

How? Barande demonstrated that the fossilized fauna remains, trilobites, found in the Taconic rocks were consistent with fossilized remains in rocks he found outside Prague (called the Barrandian) Barande proved, in the early 1860s, that of the fossilized remains of fauna that the Taconic rocks were as old as his Barrandian rocks. Case closed. Yay Emmons.

Meanwhile Emmons was banned (BANNED!!!) from the practice of geology in the state of New York and sued Hall for slander and libel. In 1851, after losing the lawsuit, Emmons was hired by the state of North Carolina for the newly created position of State Geologist. He continued in that position until his death in 1863 (before Barande’s conclusions were widely accepted).

Back to the building

In 1901 a plaque was place on the building, “In the house, the home of Dr. Ebenezer Emmons, the first formal efforts were made in 1835 and again in 1839, toward the organization of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, by whose authority this tablet is erected 1901”

By 1962 that corner of Hudson Ave and High St. housed Dinty’s Tavern, a favorite neighborhood bar. The building was demolished in the mid-1960s and no one knows what happened to the plaque.

We think this is another person/place/event Albany needs to honor (we’re keeping a list should anyone ever solicit our input). James Hall’s lab and office in Lincoln Park is on the National Historic Register. James Dana, who never lived in Albany, has a street and a park named after him. (Dana was nationally known geologist who basically went “viral” in the 1860s. Dana Natural History Societies, for women only, sprang up all over the country. One was established by the students of Albany’s Female Academy. Dana Park was dedicated in 1901 and the memorial horse trough installed in 1903. (Political clout and money can accomplish all sorts of things.)

Even Barande has a stamp!

PS. Friedman points out that Emmons and Hall are buried next to each other at the Albany Rural Cemetery!

Copyright 2021  Julie O’Connor

The “White Terror” and Open Air Schools in Albany

At the beginning of the 1900s the disease that was most feared was the “White Terror” – tuberculosis.   Panic gripped the nation; tuberculosis (a/k/a the “wasting disease” or “consumption”) was the single largest cause of death in the U.S.  If you contracted TB it was considered to be a death sentence (1 in 7 Americans died from tuberculosis in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries).  Although the cause had been discovered in the 1880s (TB bacilli) there was no surefire real cure.

The TB sanatorium was the only answer for decades.  The first one was started by Dr. Edward Trudeau* (great grandfather of “Doonesbury” cartoonist Garry Trudeau) in 1885 in Saranac Lake.  It involved a strict regimen  of rest, exercise,  plentiful wholesome food and fresh air.. LOTS of fresh air.

The idea of using a similar regimen to prevent TB among children who were at greatest risk of contracting the disease was pioneered in Germany in 1904  It held hope; sorely lacking thus far, and swept across Europe and into the U.S. like wildfire. By 1908 a variation of this treatment was being used in Albany.

The first “open air school”,  a make-shift operation at the South End Dispensary at the corner of Westerlo and Ash Grove Place, in the  heart of the immigrant community,  was opened with about 20 grade school age kids.  It was operated jointly by the City’s Anti-

tuberculosis Committee and the Board of Education.

Soon the entire responsibility shifted to the Board and by 1910 another open air class room (sometimes called a “preventorium”) with about 30 kids was  established in School 6 on Second St. in Arbor Hill.  

In each setting the regimen was the same – lots of sunlight (thought to be a disinfectant), sufficient wholesome food (lots of milk), exercise, rest and fresh air.

Finally in 1914, when a new School 14 was opened on Trinity Place, it had a purpose-built open air school on its roof that could accommodate about 50-60 kids. There was a class room with a roof, a fixed wall and 3 walls of windows that were usually open, regardless of season or temperature. There was no heat and children wore the equivalent of snowsuits, mittens and hoots. Additionally there was a kitchen, separate dining room and shower rooms for boys and girls.

“Sitting out bags” were a thing in open air schools. The largest manufacturer in the country was Huyck Mills, just across the way in Rensselaer; the children featured in their ads were from Albany’s School 14. They were described as “brown, pliable, hairy felt-like cloth”.

A key feature was a roof terrace, off the class room; completely open except for a sheltered roof area off to the side under which were stored cots and blankets for sleeping outside on days without rain or snow. The roof terrace was described as playground far above the dust and dirt of the streets, “open to the sky and the sun with inspiring view of the Cathedral spires and the battlements of the State Capitol and City Hall tower”.

The open air classroom in School 14 was staffed by two teachers, a nurse, a matron and a cook. The day started with a visit from the school nurse followed by breakfast. Next came classwork, instruction in good health habits, a hearty lunch, exercise and then rest in the fresh air, usually in special “sitting out bags”.  Monthly home visits by the school nurse were a regular part of the regimen. In summer, some children were placed at a Child’s Hospital location in Saratoga

If active cases of TB were discovered, the children were sent to the TB Sanatorium off Western Ave.  (The Harriman Campus is there today). The Sanitarium was started around 1892 by Albany unions through the Central Federation of Labor and continued under the auspices of Albany Hospital (today’s Albany Medical Center).

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The open air class rooms were considered to be successful and cost-effective. Children remained in the class rooms for at most 2 years before their health was deemed to have improved for their return to regular classrooms.   In the 1920s another class room was added to School 14.  Open air class rooms were also added in the new buildings of School 26 (Tremont St.) and School 27 (Western Ave.) when those schools were constructed in the 1920s.

By 1930 there appears to have been about 200 children in open air school class rooms scattered throughout the city school district. By this time, the class rooms were being used for children with all sorts of health conditions (not just at risk for TB) that prevented them from applying themselves to their school work.** “The aim of the open air school is to enable debilitated children to continue their education and at the same time regain their health and strength.”

In 1934 School 14 was renovated and became Philip Schuyler Sr. High School.  The open air class room sizes were reduced and overcrowded.  The city decided to create a standalone open-air school in Lincoln Park, using Works Progress Administration (WPA) funds available from the Federal government during the Depression. The building selected for renovations was the office of James Hall ***, which dates back to the 1850s.   The facility became known as the “Sunshine School” because of the many large windows.

In the mid 1940’s. During World War II, the antibiotic streptomycin was isolated and discovered as an effective treatment for TB.  (However, TB still remains the most prevalent contagious disease in the world; ¼ of the world’s population is infected with TB.)

The Sunshine School remained opened for at least another 5 decades; in its later years it was used for children with special education needs.

*Dr. Trudeau had close ties to Albany – through the Albany Medical Society and the Episcopalian Diocese.

** In the first part of the 20^th century health and social reform movements swept the U.S. and continued with tenacity until World War II. These reforms were often linked and/or delivered through the education systems of cities and towns to be able to reach the highest number of children. The schools in Albany functioned as “safety nets” for at risk children.

***James Hall was the pre-eminent geologist and paleontologist in 19th-century America. He founded the State Museum and served an unprecedented six decades, holding both positions of state geologist and paleontologist.

Copyright 2021 Julie O’Connor

Kenwood and the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Albany

The Convent of the Sacred Heart, Kenwood, on the southern border of the city has been purchased by a developer and is undergoing substantial renovation to become Kenwood Commons – “a serene island of tranquility and luxury in the heart of New York’s vibrant Capital District is being transformed into a very special community centered around art, culture and wellness offering the highest level of luxury housing, recreation and hospitality.”

So we thought it was time to tell you its history and show you some pictures so you can get better sense of its significance in our city.

Kenwood

Kenwood was initially constructed between 1842 -1845 as a summer home for Jared Rathbone and his family. (Rathbone owned a large stove manufacturing company in Albany, was one of the wealthiest men in the City and had been mayor from 1838-1841.)  The house was built in the midst of  about 75 landscaped acres and named after Rathbone’s ancestral lands in northwest Scotland. The site for Kenwood was selected to take advantage of views of the Hudson and the Catskill mountains to the south. It was an extravagant summer “cottage”, of th type built  by many men of  similar wealth across the country at the beginning of the industrial revolution.

The builders were a Mr. Smith who did the carpentry work and David Orr, the mason.  Orr would go on to be one of the richest men in the city, with vast real estate holdings, including a “mansion” on Philip St.  The house design was called a “Pointed Villa” – a romantic unrestrained Tudor Gothic style.

In 1845 Rathbone died suddenly and in 1848 his widow Pauline married Assemblyman Ira Harris, a widower. The families blended; the Rathbones moved from their Elk St. home to the Harris house at 28 Eagle St., on the other side of Capitol and Academy Parks.  Kenwood was put on the market in the 1850s by Rathbone’s son Joel. It was purchased by the Roman Catholic order of nuns, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

The Sisters first came to Albany in 1852, opening a house and school on North Pearl Street. By 1855, a larger house was purchased; in 1859 the Society bought Kenwood. The Order established the Female Academy of the Sacred Heart on the site. The school was successful and construction on a new school began in 1866. The first wing of the building, extending from the northeast side of the Rathbone house toward the north, was completed in 1867. In 1868, a noviate wing was completed using parts from the dismantled Rathbone house.

The construction of the existing chapel was completed in 1870. It too is in a generally Gothic style and incorporated materials from an earlier structure.

(In the 1870s Albany annexed a portion of Kenwood (including the first mile of the turnpike, the toll-gate, and the Rathbone estate).

Here are some images of the school and the convent in the latter part of  the 1800s.

Most of the original outbuildings survived well into the 20th century, including a gardener’s cottage, gatekeeper’s lodge, smokehouse and carriage barn. Other outbuildings were razed in the 1980s.

In 1975 Kenwood Academy merged with St. Agnes Girls School (an Episcopal institution dating back to the 1870s on Elk St. in Albany) to form the co-educational Doane Stuart School. The campus was occupied by Sisters of the Convent of the Sacred Heart and staff and students of  Doane Stuart until 2009 when the School relocated to a new campus in Rensselaer, New York. The Kenwood sale was completed in August, 2017.

(Much of the narrative was prepared by Walter Wheeler, architectural historian at Hartgen Archeological Associate for the Historic Albany Foundation in 2012.)