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Albany
For a dozen years following Petrus Stuyvesant's "takeover" of the village of Beverwijck, three semi-autonomous but codependent entities existed side by side: the West India Company's outpost of Fort Orange, the semi-private estate called Rensselaerswijck, and Beverwijck. Steadily, Beverwijck grew. Its houses changed from wood to brick; carpenters, wheelwrights, smiths, and other tradesmen arrived and raised families. A school was founded, and a church. While most of the population was ethnically Dutch, there were also Germans, Swedes, French, and Africans. And of course Indians-on whom the fur trade depended-were an everyday presence Then, in 1664, everything changed. The English took over New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, and with it the colony of New Netherland. Beverwijck was renamed Albany, after one of the titles of James, the Duke of York, brother to King Charles II. But the town's vital position - linking Manhattan with the trade route west toward the Great Lakes - insured that it would continue to grow in size and importance, until eventually it became the capital of New York State. Even before the English takeover, Fort Orange had fallen into disrepair. Its principal flaw was its position right on the riverfront, at a spot that flooded frequently. In 1676, the English government constructed a new fort on the high ground, well away from the river and at the beginning of the road that led westward-a clear indication that the fortunes of the city of Albany would be linked to the heartland of the continent.
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Fort Orange and Beverwijck were founded on the trading of animal
skins, Albany, the city into which those settlements grew, would
be centered on another kind of trading: political favors. Albany
today is a quintessential state capital: gritty, with alternating
pockets of charm and decay, old-fashioned warmth and urban blight.
From the capitol building, a grand confection loosely based on the
Hotel de Ville in Paris, to Empire State Plaza, the 1970s dream-come-true
of Governor Nelson Rockefeller, to the brownstone blocks, it is
a place of character and characters. It seems sleepy to some, but
there is a world to explore just below the surface, as the novels
of William Kennedy's "Albany Cycle" make plain. And if you slow
down while whizzing along Broadway, you might catch a glimpse of
the plaque marking the location of the Dutch trading outpost of
Fort Orange.