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32 Places Offered for NY State, National Registers

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The New York State Board for Historic Preservation recommended the addition of 32 properties to the State and National Registers of Historic Places. Property owners, municipalities and organizations from communities throughout the state sponsored the nominations.

&#8220From urban office towers and factories to rural cemeteries and hillside retreats, these nominations reflect New York’s distinctive history,&#8221 said Carol Ash, Commissioner of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. &#8220Recognizing these landmarks will help us to preserve, appreciate and understand New York’s unique past.&#8221

Listing these properties on the State and National Registers can assist their owners in revitalizing the structures. Listing will make them eligible for various public preservation programs and services, such as matching state grants and federal historic rehabilitation tax credits.

The State and National Registers are the official lists of buildings, structures, districts, landscapes, objects and sites significant in the history, architecture, archeology and culture of New York State and the nation. There are nearly 90,000 historic buildings, structures and sites throughout the state listed on the National Register of Historic Places, individually or as components of historic districts.

Once the recommendations are approved by the state historic preservation officer, the properties are listed on the New York State Register of Historic Places and then nominated to the National Register of Historic Places, where they are reviewed and, once approved, entered on the National Register.

STATE REVIEW BOARD RECOMMENDATIONS

Albany County

1. Peltier House, Cohoes

2. Norman’s Vale (Nott House), Guilderland

3. New Scotland Presbyterian Church & Cemetery, Slingerlands

Cayuga County

4. Hutchinson Homestead, Cayuga

Chautauqua County

5. Dunkirk Schooner Site, Dunkirk

Chenango County

6. Holden B. Mathewson House, South Otselic

7. Eaton Family Residence/Jewish Center of Norwich, Norwich

Columbia County

8. Conyn-Van Rensselaer House, Claverack

9. St. John’s Lutheran Church, Ancram

10. Pratt Homestead, Spencertown

Cortland County

11. Stage Coach Inn/Royal Johnson House

Erie County

12. E.&B. Holmes Machinery Company Building, Buffalo

Herkimer County

13. Masonic Temple, Newport Lodge No.455, Newport

Kings County

14. Beth-El Jewish Center of Flatbush, Brooklyn

Livingston County

15. Sweet Briar, Geneseo

Madison County

16. Chittenango Pottery, Chittenango

Monroe County

17. Lake View Cemetery, Brockport

Montgomery County

18. Chalmers Knitting Mill, Amsterdam

New York County

19. New York Telephone Co. Building, Manhattan

20. Park and Tilford Building, Manhattan

Niagara County

21. 8 Berkley Drive, Lockport

Oneida County

22. First United Methodist Church, Rome

23. Edward W. Stanley Recreation Center, Clinton

Onondaga County

24. Louis Will House, Syracuse

25. C.G. Meaker Warehouse and Syracuse Industrial Properties, Syracuse

Orange County

26. Dock Hill Extension Stone Arch Bridge, Cornwall-on-Hudson

27. Balmville Cemetery, Balmville

Oswego County

28. Dr. Charles M. Lee House, Fulton

29. Little Stone House, Mexico

Richmond County

30. Jacques Marchais Center of Tibetan Art, Staten Island

Suffolk County

31. William Cauldwell House, Noyac

Westchester County

32. Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow

Passing as Black: A Pioneer of American Alpine Climbing

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There was an interesting review of Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line by Martha A. Sandweiss in the New York Times Book Review yesterday. The book is about Clarance King, first director of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), American alpine climbing pioneer and author who passed as black, married a former slave, and lived two lives from his home base in New York City.

Passing Strange meticulously — sometimes too meticulously- the book can be plodding — recounts the unlikely convergence of two lives: King was born in 1842 in Newport, R.I., to parents of longstanding American stock, and Ada Copeland was born a slave in Georgia, months before Confederate guns fired on Fort Sumter. Copeland, like most slaves, is woefully underdocumented- we know that she somehow became literate, migrated to New York in the 1880s and found a job in domestic service. King, by contrast, is all but overdocumented- after schooling, he went west as a surveyor, summing up 10 years of work in two books, including the 815-page “Systematic Geology,” which told, one historian said, “a story only a trifle less dramatic than Genesis.”

The pair met sometime around 1888, somewhere in bustling New York. By telling Copeland he was “James Todd,” a Pullman porter from Baltimore, King implied his race- a white man could not hold such a job. They married that year (though without obtaining a civil license), settling in Brooklyn and then, as Copeland had five children, Flushing, Queens. All the while King maintained residential club addresses in Manhattan, where colleagues knew him as an elusive man about town. Living a double life is costly, and King’s Western explorations never quite delivered returns, so the Todds were always broke.

King was among the first to climb some of the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada range in the late 1860s and early 1870s and wrote Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, which includes accounts of his adventures and hardships there.

According to The Literature of Mountain Climbing in America (1918):

The beginnings of mountaineering in America have to be looked for mainly in early histories and narratives of travel, though the first ascent in the Canadian Rockies is chronicled in the supplement to a botanical magazine. The first magazine article upon American mountains seems to be Jeremy Belknap&#8216-s account of the White Mountains, printed in the American Magazine in Philadelphia in February, 1788. The first book was Joel T. Headley’s The Adirondack, published in 1849. The Alpine Journal of England, the earliest of such magazines, had a short account of a climb in Central America in its first volume, 1864, and in the third volume, 1867, there was an account of an ascent of Mt. Hood. The first book devoted to alpine climbing in America was Clarence King’s Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada.

As an aside, among the men who were associated with Clarence King was his good friend, artist John Henry Hill. Hill accompanied King on two expeditions west (1866 and 1870) as a staff artist but his New York claim to fame is his work on the Adirondacks which he first visited in the 1860s. He camped and sketched throughout the Adirondacks, and from 1870 to 1874, lived in a cabin he dubbed &#8220Artist’s Retreat&#8221 that he built on Phantom Island near Bolton’s Landing, Lake George. During one winter, Hill’s brother, a civil engineer, visited and the two men set out on the ice to survey the narrows and make one of the first accurate maps of the islands which Hill than made into an etching “surrounding it with an artistic border representing objects of interest in the locality.” On June 6, 1893 Phantom Island was leased by the Forest Commission to prominent Glens Falls Republican Jerome Lapham.

His journal and much of his work is held by the Adirondack Museum, and additional works can be found at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New-York Historical Society, and the Columbus Museum of Art.

AHA Announces New Fellowship in Digital History

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In 2009, George Mason University and the American Historical Association will offer the first Roy Rosenzweig Fellowship for Innovation in Digital History. This award was developed by friends and colleagues of Roy Rosenzweig (1950–2007), Mark and Barbara Fried Professor of History and New Media at George Mason University, to honor his life and work as a pioneer in the field of digital history.

This nonresidential fellowship will be awarded annually to honor and support work on an innovative and freely available new media project, and in particular for work that reflects thoughtful, critical, and rigorous engagement with technology and the practice of history. The fellowship will be conferred on a project that is either in a late stage of development or which has been launched in the past year but is still in need of further improvements. The fellow(s) will be expected to apply awarded funds toward the advancement of the project goals during the fellowship year.

In a 1-2 page narrative, entries should provide a method of access to the project (e.g., web site address, software download), indicate the institutions and individuals involved with the project, and describe the project’s goals, functionality, intended audience, and significance. A short budget statement on how the fellowship funds will be used should be attached. Projects may only be submitted once for the Rosenzweig Fellowship.

The entry should be submitted by e-mail to [email protected]. Questions about the prize and application process should be directed to [email protected]. The deadline for submission of entries is May 15, 2009. Recipients will be announced at the 2010 AHA Annual Meeting in San Diego.

History of Slavery in New York Discussion Today

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Historian Alan Singer, a professor of education at Hofstra University, will address &#8220Time to Teach the Truth: The History of Slavery in New York State,&#8221 during a daylong series of talks and workshops at SUNY Cortland and at Cortland Junior-Senior High School on Wednesday, March 4.

&#8220Most Americans are aware of the more than two century-long history of slavery in our country,&#8221 explained Keith Smith, director of the Educational Opportunity Program and one of the event organizers. &#8220Most, however, consider slavery to have been limited to the South. Dr. Singer is an expert on the many facets of slavery in the Empire State, and how to teach about them. He is eager to discuss his work with colleagues and students.&#8221

A drop-in discussion session will be held between 9:30-11:30 a.m. in Old Main, Room 127, for any educators, would-be educators, and others interested in conversing with Singer and viewing his teaching materials. Singer will speak on the history of slavery in New York state during a sandwich seminar, which is free and open to the public, at 12:30 p.m. in Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge.

He will conduct a workshop on teaching about slavery from 3-4 p.m. at Cortland Junior-Senior High School. For information about attending that event, please contact Karen Hempson, coordinator of the Professional Development School, a SUNY Cortland-Cortland Public Schools initiative, at (607) 753-4209 or by e-mail at: [email protected].

At the Hofstra University School of Education and Allied Human Services, Singer is a professor of secondary education and the director of social studies education. A former New York City high school social studies teacher, he is editor of Social Science Docket, a joint publication of the New York State and New Jersey Councils for the Social Studies. His books include New York and Slavery, Time to Teach the Truth and Social Studies for Secondary Schools (Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, 2nd edition, 2003).

Singer, who earned a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Rutgers University, is the author and editor of New York and Slavery: Complicity and Resistance, a 268-page secondary school curriculum guide.

The daylong events are being sponsored by a combination of College and community groups. The College sponsors are: Africana Studies Department- Center for Gender and Multicultural Studies- Dean of Arts and Sciences Office- Dean of Education Office- Education Club- Educational Opportunity Program- History Department- President’s Office and the Provost’s Office. The community sponsors include the Cortland Junior-Senior High School Department of Social Studies, the Professional Development School, and the Wilkins Foundation.

State Proposes Sales Tax on Preservation Projects

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According to the New York Landmark Society a proposed change in New York State Tax Law would adversely affect preservation projects in the state:

A proposed change to the New York State Tax Law would harm preservation and increase sales tax on preservation projects by narrowing the definition of “capital improvements” on buildings. The new language would limit the definition to apply only to projects that constitute “new construction, or a new addition to or total reconstruction of existing construction.” This is a change from the current definition which allows an exemption of sales tax on labor for the many preservation projects whose scope is less than 100% reconstruction of a building.

As a result of the proposed change, many renovations, restorations and rehabilitations of existing buildings would no longer qualify as “capital improvements” and the labor associated with these projects would become subject to the State sales tax (4%), and possibly also the New York City sales tax (4%) and MTA sales tax (.375%). At present, these projects generally pay sales tax on building materials but not on labor.

Please e-mail Governor Paterson today by clicking here saying:&#8221please continue using the current definition of &#8216-capital improvement’ in part PP of Tax Law 1101(b)(9) and not limit it to new construction. The proposed changes work against preservation projects by adding a sales tax to the cost of labor. Preservation projects promote economic revitalization, build communities, and save energy.&#8221

NYPL Updates Google Earth-Maps Division Collection

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Matt Knutzen is reporting on the NYPL’s blog that they have updated the Map Division’s Google Earth index to the digitized New York City map collections. The index now includes &#8220more than 2000 maps from 32 titles, organized chronologically and geographically by borough, all published between 1852 and 1923.&#8221

Here are Knutzen’s recommended ways to search for maps using the index.

1. Select a borough and vintage using the folders from the list on the left sidebar.

2. Double click the map to fly to your chosen location, then use the time slider at the top left of the map frame to narrow the chronological search scope.

3. Enter a street address in the &#8220fly to&#8221 search box, then use the time slider.

Once you’ve located a historical map coverage, scroll your mouse over the area and click. A popup window will allow you to access bibliographic information and a digital copy of the historical map.

Libraries Protest Tax Collection Services

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The New York State Library Association (NYLA) called on Governor David Paterson and the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance today to immediately end pushing tax form distribution and customer service duties onto local public libraries.

&#8220Not only are you asking us to do more with less, but you are asking libraries to help collect the very tax dollars you are taking away from us,&#8221 said Michael Borges, NYLA’s executive director. “Our members are local community libraries, not state tax collection agencies.”

The NYS Department of Taxation and Finance has discontinued mailing out forms to NYS taxpayers, and a press release and postcard sent to New Yorkers informed citizens to either visit their public libraries to pick up tax forms or download them from the internet. The move was labeled a cost cutting move, saving the Department of Taxation and Finance roughly $1 million annually. However, the cost of handling tax form distribution has been largely dumped on New York’s libraries, which are now expected to print out tax forms and provide tax-related customer service.

“Libraries are responsible for not only providing the forms, but also for helping taxpayers fill out the forms and answering other tax related questions,” said Borges. “Library traffic is up, circulation is up, and the types of library services in high-demand continue to climb while our state funding is getting cut. Adding tax form services simply shifts the costs and administrative burdens from state agencies to local libraries, and we are in no position to accept these unfunded mandates.”

“In recent years we have had hundreds of state and Federal forms given to us by the state and picked up by local residents. There is absolutely no way that we could afford to absorb the printing costs if we are forced to provide these forms entirely on our own” said Kevin Gallagher of the Middletown Thrall Library. “Imagine the cost of hundreds of tax forms, considering our budget is already being cut. It’s just not feasible.”

”I don’t mind providing this service, as I consider anything which brings more people into the library, and which increases our value to the community, to be an asset. But, certainly, it is incongruous for the state to cut library funding while it is savings millions itself by shifting its responsibilities to the very libraries it is cutting”, said Ed Dunscombe, Director, George Johnson Memorial Library in Endicott.

“This year we have spent more staff time and effort on tax-related services than ever before, &#8220said Barbara Nichols Randall, Director of the Guilderland Public Library, “We have a long standing partnership with AARP to help people in our community prepare their taxes but the mandate that local libraries replace the state in providing tax forms to the public is an added cost for the library itself. In January alone, our estimated staff cost for this service is almost $2,500, not to mention the overhead expense incurred by using our copiers and paper supplies to print the forms.&#8221

“It’s a service we provide happily, but it takes staff away from serving patrons’ other reference needs and is having an impact on our supply budget,” added Mrs. Randall. &#8220This year we estimated that we will save the community $42,000 with this service.&#8221

The proposed 2009-10 Executive Budget reduces library aid by $18 million or 18% to $80.5 million, a level not seen since 1993. These cuts are on top of the two cuts already imposed on libraries in 2008, reducing Library Aid from $102 million in 2007 to $98.5 million at the end of 2008. The proposed cuts will also result in a corresponding loss of $2 million in federal funds for library services in New York, reducing federal aid from $9 million to $7 million by 2011.

About NYLA: The New York Library Association &#8212- America’s first state library association &#8212- was founded in 1890 to lead in the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship to enhance learning, quality of life, and equal opportunity for all New Yorkers. Today, NYLA is working stronger than ever to promote its mission of supporting libraries and information services.