The town of Williamstown, Massachusetts is currently restoring some artifacts from a pretty much forgotten celebration of two important events in New York State history.
In the fall of 1909, various activities took place from New York City up to Albany to commemorate Hendrick Hudson’s 1609 trip up the river that would come to bear his name, and also the 1809 steamboat trip on the river by Robert Fulton’s Clermont.
In connection with the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, several sculptures were positioned at the top of State Street hill in Albany, on the eastern side of the Capitol building. A statue of Hendrick Hudson stood at a vantage point above the river, with a lion on either side of him. Made of plaster of paris, they were presumably the molds for bronze statues whose whereabouts have been lost to history.
After the celebrations were over, the Albany statues were moved inside the Capitol, where they were on display with the battle flags and other artifacts from the Civil War. There, they greeted visitors for some 40 years. Then, in 1954, Hudson and his lions, along with statues of Christopher Columbus and Sir Walter Raleigh were unceremoniously removed. Some renovations were being undertaken in the Capitol, and the State Budget Division found it a convenient excuse to dispose of the five statues.
A contract was given to Daniel A. Lanzetta, who owned a marble works in Albany, for some of the renovation work and it included the removal of five statutes. The pieces were hauled to Lanzetta’s business, located on South Pearl Street, where they were to be destroyed. “We aren’t to bring them back,” said Lanzetta, quoted in the Knickerbocker News on March 31, 1954. “They’re to be destroyed. The state doesn’t want them any more.” Lanzetta did offer to give any of the items away, so long as the takers would bear the cost of their transportation.
During the move from the Capitol, Hudson’s head had become separated from his body, adding to the indignity of the occasion. Newspapers reported, however, that re-attaching the head (which was reported to be sitting in a bird bath at Lanzetta’s) could be easily accomplished. A sixth sculpture, of an Albany soldier who had been killed in World War I, was treated with more honor, and was moved to a different spot in the Capitol.
Some complaints were raised, especially by David Lithgow, who had sculpted the statue of the soldier, who claimed that one of the pieces of artwork had been created by noted sculptor Daniel Chester French. (If any of the pieces were the handiwork of French, it must have been either Columbus or Raleigh, since Albany resident, Miriam Clausen, came forward to say that her uncle, Charles Lewis Hinton, had created the Hudson piece — and, one might suspect — also the lions.) Lithgow faulted “ignorant politicians” for the travesty. He asked the Knickerbocker News: “Don’t they know it’s important to keep a link with the past?” The Budget Division said that the State Historian and the State Librarian had indicated they had little knowledge of the statues’ provenances, and had doubted their historical significance. The State Museum claimed they’d not been consulted about the removal of the artwork, but also said they had no use for them.
Though the mayor of the city of Hudson made inquiries about obtaining the decapitated Hudson figure, it is uncertain what became of it, and what happened to the Columbus and Raleigh pieces. As for the lions, despite a plea made by the Albany Lions Club to Governor Thomas E. Dewey, they stayed at Lanzetta’s. There — though spared from immediate destruction — they stood for a decade beneath a canopy, where they were only minimally protected from the ravages of Albany’s winter weather.
Somehow, a man named Albert Bachand became aware of their existence. The lions, he thought, would make impressive decorations for a mobile home park he had built in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Bachand’s park, called The Spruces, was not quite your average trailer park: its features included, for example, an ornamental pool with spouting fountains that made singing noises.
About 1965, Bachand purchased the lions from Lanzetta and had them transported to his park, where, standing atop platforms supported by pillars, they graced the entrance. One lion suffered damage during the move, and Bachand had to use a quarter-ton of cement to effect repairs.
In 2011, Hurricane Irene sent the Hoosic River over its banks, and the flooding wreaked terrific damage to most of the mobile homes, forcing the relocation of many residents. Eventually, the town purchased the property via disaster funding. Though the park belongs to history now, the lions — which through the years have become local landmarks — will remain on guard at their stations, restored to their original leonine stateliness.
Author note: it is an unusual coincidence, but Hendrick Hudson’s lions were not the only pair that were relocated from Albany to Williamstown. A pair of stone lions that had graced the Ezra Parmalee Prentice mansion at the south end of Albany also made the trip. They were taken from Prentice’s Mount Hope estate to his Mount Hope Farm, located on Green River Road in Williamstown, probably sometime in the late 1920s or 1930s. In 1962, the Prentice lions, reportedly made of stone rather than plaster, were boxed up and trucked to another Prentice family farm, operated by American Breeders Service near Madison, Wisconsin.
Friends note: Part of the Patroon’s Van Rensselaer Manor made its way to a fraternity house in Williamstown circa 1900.
by David Fiske from the New York History blog http://newyorkhistoryblog.org
The centerpiece of the celebration was a naval parade, including the Hudson River Navigation Co. and People’s Line Dayliners and Night Boats, private yachts, military torpedo boats, tugs, a U.S. Coast Guard revenue cutter – almost anything that could float its way from the City up the River. There were ships from England, Germany and France.
But the stars of the flotilla were two replica ships. One, a replica of Robert Fulton’s “Clermont”, the first successful steamboat in the world. The naval parade traveled from New York City to Albany and then to Troy, paying homage to the first Clermont trip from New York City to Albany in 1807.
The other was the first replica of the “Half Moon”, the ship in which Hudson traveled up the River to discover Albany in 1609. (Yes, there was another Half Moon replica before that with which we are familiar today.) While the Clermont was a wonderful model, constructed by the Staten Island Shipbuilding Co., the Half Moon was special.
It was a gift from the Netherlands, built in a shipyard in Amsterdam, from ancient plans for a sister ship of the original 1609 Half Moon.
When the naval parade sailed to Albany it landed at Riverside Park. The small park was located just below Madison Ave., overlooking the River near Westerlo St. It was built in 1903 to serve the immigrant (mostly Jewish and Italian) populations crammed in tenement houses overflowing the South End. For the Celebration, a temporary triumphal arch was constructed and the crews of the Half Moon and Clermont were greeted with great pomp and circumstance. From there, the major parade of the event wound its way through the South End, past the Governor’s Mansion, and up and over to Arbor Hill and then down to Clinton Ave., across N. Pearl and up to Washington Ave. by the Capitol. After visiting Albany the naval parade proceeded to Troy, where the festivities continued there and into Cohoes.
The story of Half Moon is similar. After the Celebration, the Half Moon was towed to Palisades Interstate Park near Bear Mountain, and moored in the Popolopen Creek as a tourist attraction. From there she went to Roundout Point near Kingston. At the behest of the Mayor of Cohoes, she traveled farther upriver. A small area called East Side Park was created just south of the Van Schaick Mansion (about near the area where Hudson finally gave up his search for a Northwest Passage).. Attempts to raise funds for her preservation were unsuccessful, there were few visitors, and she was beset by vandals and fires. The Half Moon became a “lonely hulk” and was finally destroyed by fire in 1932
Friends of Albany History 