Adirondack Trails with Tales: History Hikes through the Adirondack Park and the Lake George, Lake Champlain &- Mohawk Valley Regions (Blackdome Press, 2009) is by Albany writers Barbara Delaney and Russell Dunn, licensed guides and authors of books on the great outdoors of eastern New York and western New England. This guide is an effort to connect hikers with the history around them. The guide includes detailed directions, maps, photographs, and vintage postcards. Read more
Month: December 2012
This Weeks Top New York History News
- US Gov Pledges Native Sacred Site Protection
- North Country Chamber Marks 100 Yrs
- CCC Students Protest Layoffs
- New Glimpses of the Twin Towers’ Past
- Proposed Atomic Historic Sites Raise Ire
- Students Seize Cooper Union Room in Protest
- First Freight in 23 Yrs Set to Roll
- Mohawk Land Sold at Auction
- Campout to Mark Pike’s Cantonment
- War of 1812 Pension Digitization Funded Read more
This Weeks New York History Web Highlights
- City Blog: Midtown Zoning May Imperil Historic Buildings
- Closed Prisons: What Do We Do With Them?
- Adirondack Attic: 1818 Map of North Country
- Old Salt Blog: Will South St Seaport Survive Sandy?
- Forgotten Stories: The Original Flagpole Sitta’
- Sean Wilentz: The Saga of Columbia Records
- Video: NY’s Impact During War of 1812
Each Friday morning New York History compiles for our readers the previous week’s top web links about New York’s state and local history. You can find all our weekly round-ups here.
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4-H Living History Program Steps Back in Time
Are your kids interested in history? Do they like to learn about people and events of the past? Do they like to pretend to be those people or live in that time period? Then the multi-county 4-H Living History program might be for your kids. This is an excellent program for home school youth or public schooled children, who are ages seven and older, to explore their heritage, community, and expand their knowledge of local history. Read more
A History of the Albany County Hall of Records
The following essay by Albany County Clerk Thomas Clingan is reprinted with permission from the Tivoli Times, the newsletter of the Albany County Hall of Records (ACHOR). ACHOR celebrated its 30th Anniversary in October.
Albany County can trace its records management program to a 1978 National Historical Publications and Records Commission (“NHRPC”) grant of $9235 to inventory Albany County Clerk records, accepted by the Albany County Legislature in Resolution 99 of 1978. This first modern inventory was completed and printed in 1979. The theft and quick recovery of County Clerk’s oldest Dutch record book in May 1980 increased public awareness of the need to safeguard these documents, and in January 1981, Resolution 10 of that year accepted a further $20,000 NHPRC grant to study the possibility of a joint city and county archives and records management system.
James Howard Kunstler On Rescuing the American Townscape
The Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA) will present a lecture “Rescuing the American Townscape from its Own Recent History” by author James Howard Kunstler.
James Howard Kunstler is a vocal critic of American architecture and urban planning which he describes as a tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities and ravaged countryside. For two decades, Kunstler has examined the growth of urban and suburban America. Read more
Fort Ticonderoga: The 3-D Movie
The terms “North Country” and “world premiere” haven’t mingled very often, but May 8, 1953 was one notable exception. It all had to do with Fort Ti, but not the one we’re all familiar with. This was Fort Ti, the movie, and it was special for several reasons. Read more
New Exhibit: Photography of the Landmarks of New York City
On December 14, the New-York Historical Society will present The Landmarks of New York, an exhibition exploring the history of New York as revealed by its historical structures.
The exhibition’s 90 photographs of landmarks are critical documents that chronicle the city’s journey from a small colonized village to a city at the center of the world from the 17th through the 20th centuries and includes the newly acquired set of 30 photographs by Christine Osinski, Steven Tucker, Reuben Cox, Julio Bofill, Michael Stewart, Michael Stewart, Andrew Garn, Richard Cappelluti, Adam S. Wahler, Eric C. Chung and others. Read more
Public History and Debate of Public Issues
How important is “public history?”
The essay on public history in the newly published second edition of the Encyclopedia of Local History, provides some fresh insights. The Encyclopedia, edited by Tompkins County Historian Carol Kammen, a long-time leader in the field, and Amy H. Wilson, an independent museum consultant and former director of the Chemung County Historical Society in Elmira, is a rich source of fresh insights on all aspects of local history. Read more
Landmark John Singer Sargent Exhibition Planned
The Brooklyn Museum, together with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has organized the landmark exhibition John Singer Sargent Watercolors, which unites for the first time the holdings of Sargent watercolors acquired by each of the two institutions in the early twentieth century. The ninety-three watercolors in the exhibition–including thirty-eight from Brooklyn’s collection, most of which have not been on view for decades–provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to view a broad range of Sargent’s finest production in the medium. Read more