Fleeting Capture: Was Fast Approaching a Century When . . .

Union Street neighborhood, Schenectady

I unexpectedly wandered into the Stockade Historical District in Schenectady. I knew I had arrived when I slowed my pursuit of reaching 100+ miles today (and the end of the Erie Canal in Troy) and gaped instead at the age and quality of the architecture in this neighborhood, the original site of the stockade fort abutting the Mohawk River. Instead, I walked my bike down Union Street, and casually inquired at the English Garden B&B if there was room at her Inn. There wasn't, but she instead directed me two blocks back to the Stockade Inn, a site first acquired from the local natives in 1661 by a Arendt Van Curler (everything is of dutch descent here) when the fort was started. It served as a tavern, and sheriff's residence until it was burned during the French and Indian War, then rebuilt in its present form as a Bank in 1818. Over the years it was used as a home, a school and the Mohawk Club (for men only of course), and now an Inn with a cavernous, well appointed guest room. Or consider the old St. Georges Church a block away that housed and protected revolutionary war troops.

And this is but one structure in this amazing neighborhood, reflecting the fact that I have gone back beyond a century to the early 1700's when this neighborhood evolved, from the early 1820's when the Erie Canal on its western terminus was being planned and constructed. What a surprising revelation, one that is likely more obvious to locals, but not a midwesterner where the oldest buildings seems of 1880's vintage.

The Stockade Inn, Schenectady

July 20th will go into the log as a day of architecture, and a perfect riding day - low 80's, dry, a perfectly blue sky, and a magnificent tailwind all day heading east along the Mohawk. I made stops along the way in Frankfort, Herkimer (which figured prominently in the Revolutionary War), the Herkimer Fort Church (1753) in German Flats, the General Nicholas Herkimer House (1750), the cliff hugging town of Little Falls, a lunch stop in Canajoharie, and the old Erie Lock 28.

After an evening wander of the neighborhood, a cold beer at the Van Dyck Lounge was quite appropriate, with all beers brewed on site. In all, a perfect day for riding only 85 miles, short of the certain 100 mile mark that could have been, and a perfect end.