Annual Fund 2021

Dear Friends in Preservation, 

At 48 Hudson Avenue, a building sits amid the vast emptiness of Albany’s so-called “parking lot district.”  Thirty-two years ago, the oldest remaining Dutch building in our city was “discovered” underneath nearly 300 years of additions and new facades, adjacent to newer neighbors that were collapsing or being torn down.

Last week I listened as Historic Albany Foundation’s staff member Cara Macri led a tour of the building, relating how its discovery started filling in some blank spots in what we know about Albany’s past and where its people lived and worked.  As she spoke, I heard the stories of real people emerge, stories that are as familiar as my own family’s and those of my friends and neighbors.  They are Albany’s stories.

Historic Albany Foundation is a keeper of Albany’s stories and a fierce advocate for preserving Albany’s built environment. For nearly fifty years, with the financial help of our members and supporters, we have provided technical assistance to homeowners, salvaged elements from buildings that can’t be saved and brought our city’s history alive with walking tours and other programming. We do this because people like you are here to support it.

“Historic Albany Foundation is a keeper of Albany’s stories and a fierce advocate for preserving Albany’s built environment…”

The need for the services that we provide continues to grow.  Albany continues to lose buildings to neglect and to the developers’ wrecking ball.  As these buildings come down, we not only lose our old stories, we lose the ones that are still to be written. The neighborhoods stricken by neglect are those that, for hundreds of years, provided that first shot at homeownership or the bigger apartment to a growing family.   We have to advocate for those buildings like we have for those with grander proportions or more illustrious tales.

I became involved with Historic Albany Foundation during the sixteen years I served on Albany’s Common Council. We were working to find innovative ways to keep older, two-family homes viable and available to new generations, especially in neighborhoods like ours, along Delaware Avenue.

While serving in public office, I heard a lot of stories -- about people who grew up here, who moved here from other countries and other states, who played politics, danced in jazz clubs and ran bootleg whiskey.  They worked long hours in the railyards and factories so they could build the churches, schools and homes that form our communities.

We continue to save those stories when we save their context, when we save the streets, parks and homes where they lived.  And we save the space for the stories yet to come.

Can I count on you to join me in supporting these efforts?

Thank you,

Shawn Morris, Board Member

Preservation and Advocacy Chair

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