Up against the (city) wall
by Don Rittner

Many ancient towns, cities, and even countries around the world were fortified with walls to protect their citizens from enemy attack. Perhaps the most famous is the 2000 year old wall of China that stretches for 4500 miles. Romans in the third century built walls around most of their major cities because of increasing threats of invasion from the northern "barbarians."

Today, there are currently 131 walled towns and cities in 23 countries in Europe and beyond that have protected their historic walls and fortifications.

Here in America, Iroquois and Mohican villages were surrounded by wooden walls called stockades made from pitch pines and other trees, as was the early settlements of Albany and Schenectady. Troy was not fortified; it wasn't settled until after the Revolution. However, other early American cities like Savannah, GA, Charleston, SC, and St. Augustine, Fl, were all walled. How did New York City's Wall Street get it's name? It too had a stockade built in 1653 by Dutch colonists to protect the settled area south of it from attack.

Most walls were made from timber because it was cheaper to cut them down, although they were high maintenance. As the city grew, expanding the fortification was simply by moving the existing wall, or building a new one. This occurred in Albany several times. There were stockades erected there in 1659 (actually a plank wall), 1698, and 1756. Throughout the intervening years, rotten timbers were replaced as needed. In fact, Beverywck/Albany passed a law stating that people could not rent building lots outside the wall until all the building lots inside were filled up because of the expense of moving the wall.

In Canada, Quebec City is famous for being the only city in North America to have an existing 'stone' wall around it, and thousands of visitors flock there each year to shop.

Albany would also be surrounded by a stone wall if it and the New York Provincial Legislature weren't so cheap in the 18th century. In fact, Albany did build part of a stone wall and it may still be lying under the ground waiting to be rediscovered (and then buried with a new parking garage which appears to be the fate of all Albany archeology projects).

In September, 1733, Albany officials petitioned governor William Cosby for permission to assess the city and county inhabitants to improve their fortifications, "as we are seated on the frontiers of this province and have very dangerous neighbors to the northward who have made encroachments on us..."

The following year Albany started constructing a stone wall, but also petitioned the governor for new wooden stockades until the stone wall was completed. For some reason, Albany only constructed a stone section along the north, 334 feet long, from the river to the road to Watervliet, present day Broadway.

Albany's stone wall tapered as it rose 10 1/2 feet in the air. There were evenly spaced holes for rifles and muskets 8 feet high (implying a wooden firing platform). A map of the wall was drawn by John Montressor, British military engineer in the 1760's.

Why the wall was not completed is unknown. It may be the city decided not to go ahead with it, considering the expense, even though in 1753, they petitioned for a tax on everyone in the county to try finishing it, referring to the still standing "stone wall begun several years ago." Albany County was then all the settled land above Ulster County.

It was clear by 1755 it wasn't going to happen and petitioned instead for the inhabitants to be required to provide regular timber stockades. In 1762, the area behind the stone wall was dubbed 'Wall Street,' now present day Orange Street. And so Albany's big plan for a walled city of stone crumbled. A resolution was passed in 1768 to dismantle and use the stone for a north dock. Only archaeology can determine if the lower foundation courses of the great stone wall and a possible moat are still there.

Ironically, this fortified mentality has come back in a newer package. Since the 1980's, new gated communities have been springing up around the country. Millions of Americans have chosen to live in walled and fenced communal residential space. By using gates, fences, private security guards, video surveillance, exclusionary land-use policies, tighter development regulations and other planning tools, we are increasingly restricting access to residential, commercial, and public spaces.

Who are we afraid of this time?