Rensselaer County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 161,130. Its county seat is Troy. The county is named in honor of the family of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, the original Dutch owner of the land in the area. The county is part of the Capital District region of the state.
Brunswick is a town in Rensselaer County, New York, United States. The municipality was originally settled in the early 18th century. During its history, it had been part of Albany County, Rensselaerswyck, and Troy, before its incorporation in 1807. It is bordered on the west by the city of Troy; on the north by Schaghticoke and Pittstown; on the east by Grafton; and on the south by Poestenkill and North Greenbush. The population was 12,581 at the 2020 census. The source of the town's name is not certain, though some claim it comes from the source of its first inhabitants from the province of Brunswick-Lüneburg in Germany.
Troy is a city in the United States state of New York and is the county seat of Rensselaer County, New York. It is located on the western edge of that county on the eastern bank of the Hudson River just northeast of the capital city of Albany. Troy has close ties to Albany, New York and nearby Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital District.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut, closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Van Rensselaer and Amos Eaton for the "application of science to the common purposes of life" and is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world and the Western Hemisphere.
Prospect Park is an 80-acre (32 ha) city park in Troy, New York. The park is situated between Congress and Hill Street on top of Mount Ida. Prospect Park was originally designed in 1903 by local landscape engineer Garnet Douglass Baltimore, the first African-American graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He had also designed the 200-acre Forest Park Cemetery on Pinewood Avenue in Brunswick in 1897, which is now neglected and far from its picturesque days. The park started to fall into disrepair in the 1950s, and relatively little of Baltimore's work is still evident in the park today.
The Capital District, also known as the Capital Region, is the metropolitan area surrounding Albany, the capital of the U.S. state of New York. The Capital District was first settled by the Dutch in the early 17th century and came under English control in 1664. Albany has been the permanent capital of the state of New York since 1797. The Capital District is notable for many historical events that predate the independence of the United States, including the Albany Plan of Union and the Battles of Saratoga.
Stephen Van Rensselaer III was an American landowner, businessman, militia officer, and politician. A graduate of Harvard College, at age 21, Van Rensselaer took control of Rensselaerswyck, his family's manor. He developed the land by encouraging tenants to settle it and granting them perpetual leases at moderate rates, which enabled the tenants to use more of their capital to make their farms and businesses productive.
Washington Augustus Roebling was an American civil engineer who supervised the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, designed by his father John A. Roebling. He served in the Union Army during the American Civil War as an officer at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Forest Park Cemetery, also known colloquially as Pinewoods Cemetery due to its location at 387 Pinewoods Avenue, is an abandoned cemetery, located in Brunswick, New York, United States just east of the city of Troy. It is famous for the numerous urban legends regarding ghosts.
Garnet Douglass Baltimore was the first African-American engineer and graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, Class of 1881.
Joseph Mabbett Warren was a U.S. Representative from New York.
Oakwood Cemetery is a nonsectarian rural cemetery in northeastern Troy, New York, United States. It operates under the direction of the Troy Cemetery Association, a non-profit board of directors that deals strictly with the operation of the cemetery. It was established in 1848 in response to the growing rural cemetery movement in New England and went into service in 1850. The cemetery was designed by architect John C. Sidney and underwent its greatest development in the late 19th century under superintendent John Boetcher, who incorporated rare foliage and a clear landscape design strategy. Oakwood was the fourth rural cemetery opened in New York and its governing body was the first rural cemetery association created in the state.
Samuel Blatchford was the first president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
The Central Troy Historic District is an irregularly shaped, 96-acre (39 ha) area of downtown Troy, New York, United States. It has been described as "one of the most perfectly preserved 19th-century downtowns in the [country]" with nearly 700 properties in a variety of architectural styles from the early 19th to mid-20th centuries. These include most of Russell Sage College, one of two privately owned urban parks in New York, and two National Historic Landmarks. Visitors ranging from the Duke de la Rochefoucauld to Philip Johnson have praised aspects of it. Martin Scorsese used parts of downtown Troy as a stand-in for 19th-century Manhattan in The Age of Innocence.
Proctor's Theater is located on Fourth Street in Troy, New York, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and is a contributing property to the Central Troy Historic District, added to the Register in 1986.
The Winslow Chemical Laboratory was a laboratory of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus in Troy, New York, United States, which finished construction in 1866. It is named in honor of the 5th President of RPI, John F. Winslow, who donated half of the construction cost. The building is brick with stone trimmings and was originally constructed with butternut, chestnut and black walnut. The whole building was fitted for complete courses in general and analytical chemistry. The design and construction was overseen by Professor Henry B. Nason, head of the department of chemistry at the Institute. The lower story contained the metallurgical laboratory and second story contained the chemical laboratory, store rooms and work rooms. The laboratory could accommodate about 40 students. The third story contained a lecture room, a private study, the library and a recitation room. The library of chemical books was established by a donation of several sets of journals and a gift of three hundred dollars from John F. Winslow.
West Hall is a building on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus in Troy, New York, United States. It is currently home to the Arts Department at RPI. It was previously a hospital, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Old Troy Hospital.
The Poesten Kill is a 26.2-mile-long (42.2 km) creek in Rensselaer County, Upstate New York. It flows westerly from its source at Dyken Pond in the town of Berlin to its mouth at the Hudson River in the city of Troy. The creek was used historically as a source of water for the local inhabitants and farmers. During the Industrial Revolution, it became an important source of water power, and many mills and factories sprung up along its banks.
The area of New York's Capital District, also known as the Albany metropolitan area, has seen prominent historical events, artistic creations, and unique contributions to the culture of the United States since the 17th century. The largest city in the area, Albany, consistently ranks high on lists of top cities/metro areas for culture, such as being 23rd in the book Cities Ranked & Rated. The Albany-Schenectady-Troy metro area ranked 12th among large metro areas, and Glens Falls ranked 12th among the small metro areas, in Sperling's Best Places, and Expansion Management gave the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area five Stars, its highest ranking, for quality of life features.
The history of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) spans nearly two hundred years beginning with its founding in 1824. RPI is the oldest continuously operating technological university in both the English-speaking world and the Americas. The Institute was the first to grant a civil engineering degree in the United States, in 1835. More recently, RPI also offered the first environmental engineering degree in the United States in 1961, and possibly the first ever undergraduate degree in video game design, in 2007.
