Boiling plant threatens the most important historic archeological site in the Northeast United States
By Don Rittner, Former Albany City Archeologist, 1973-1979
The Port of Albany is not what it seems. While today it is the location of scrap yards, molasses storage, grain elevators, and other industrial sites, the Port’s opening in 1932 was not the first commercial use of the land.
Before the opening of the Port it was an island and over the years had several names from Castle Island, Martine Gerritse’s land, Patroon’s Island, Van Rensselaer Island, to more recently Westerlo Island.
This island became the focus for the first Dutch habitation in the New World when a group of sailors built a fort and defensive structure on the northern part of the island in 1614, and named it Fort Nassau. This was the beginning of Albany. It was also proof that the Dutch and Mohican Nation that controlled the area had good relations.
The founding of Fort Nassau was a result of the 1613 trading expedition under the overall command of Captain Adriaen Block working for the Amsterdam Van Tweenhysen Company. Block commanded the ship the Tiger while Hedrick Christiaensen commanded the Fortune. Both ships, along with a third named the Nightingale, belonging to a second company, were moored somewhere in New York Bay during the winter of 1613.
Block’s ship the Tiger burned in December 1613 or early January 1614, and set out to build a new ship, The Onrust, with his remaining crew. Block sent Christiaensen and his crew up the Hudson River to build a trading post, Fort Nassau.
Christiaensen and his men selected the north part of Castle Island and built the Fort that was 58 feet by 58 feet (interior dimensions), and surrounded it with a moat eighteen feet wide. The moat along with breastworks protected a trading house 38 feet by 28 feet. It became the focal point for the North American fur trade in the Northeast. It also became the staging point for expeditions to seek out mineral deposits and other natural resources for exploitation.
After several washouts by the Hudson River spring floods, and a final severe one in 1617, the Dutch moved on to the mainland and built Fort Orange, which in 1970 was partially excavated before an exit from I-787 was placed on top of it.
While Fort Nassau was abandoned, the island became the home for several farms; the first called Rensselaerburgh was leased in 1630. Other tenants on the island were Brant Peelen, Adriaen Vanderdonck, first Sherriff in the Dutch colony and first promoter of democracy in the new world, Cornelis Segerse, and Martin Gerrittse Van Bergen. The farm sites may also be available on the island for archeological exploration.
By the 18th century, the island was called Patroon’s Island and was leased to John Bradstreet. Upon the death of the Patroon, the land became the property of his wife Catherine who may have renamed it Westerlo after her new husband Dominie Eilardus Westerlo in 1775. By the 19th century it not only was producing crops but two ironworks occupied the northern part.
In 1909 Albany became the first city to have a public airport when part of the island became an airfield called Quenton Roosevelt Field (after the president’s son who was killed in WW I) and famous aviators such as Amelia Earhart, James Doolittle, Clarence Chamberlain, Glenn Curtiss and Charles Lindbergh landed here. Lindbergh landed his “Spirit of St. Louis” at 2:06 PM on July 27, 1927, shortly after his historic flight to Paris, and was greeted on the island by 10,000 people.
Curtiss on May 29, 1910, left Albany and flew to Manhattan down the Hudson making the first true cross country flight in the United States.
In 1931 the Albany Port Authority was created and filling and dredging began until the Port of Albany, as we know it today, was transformed.
Global Companies’ plans to build a facility to heat crude oil at the Port of Albany is in the general vicinity of where Albany historian John Wolcott has determined that the original Fort Nassau is located. Wolcott was also responsible for finding the remains of the origi