Last week we created a new transportation hub. Now we will give tourists a reason to take the train to Troy.

The Hudson River Sloop Company
Location: Rensselaer Rolling Mill, foot of Monroe Street.

The Rensselaer Rolling Mill, (aka Ludlow Valve Company), was an important 19th century ironworks. Among other things, it provided rivets and bolts for the USS Monitor in 1862. The city has owned the site for several years letting it deteriorate to the point that part of the roof is collapsing. Within the building are two cupola furnaces, a steam engine works, bellows, and other 19th century industrial remains.

This building is ideal for a new ship building facility where Hudson River Sloops and Schooners, as well as battoes, canoes, Dutch sailing vessels, and paper boats can be built and sold.

Once, several boat makers lined the rivers from Waterford to Albany, and hundreds of boats could be seen plying up and down the river daily. Look at any 19th century painting of Troy or Albany!

The rolling mill could be used to bring back the paper boat industry created by Eliza Waters and son George in 1867. One year after the first Waters paper boat was constructed, paper-racing hulls won 14 water races, followed by 26 wins the following year, making quite a splash with the rowing public. Visit the Burden Museum to see one of only three in existence.

Local Trojan Greg Pattison, with his BOCES students, has built replicas of battoes, and there is an association of ice racers south of us that could perhaps bring winter sports to the area. Ice racing and sleighing were common on the river during the 19th century.

If Senator Joe Bruno's harbor plan doesn't materialize, a harbor can be created next to the sloop company so that a replica of the USS Monitor can dock there, as well as have landings for the sloop Woody Guthrie, and the 100-year-old Dutch barge, the Golden Re'al, operated by the New Netherland Co.

This project would not only create boats and jobs but would liven up the river travel between Waterford and Albany.

In a recent federal report, Civil War sites in America reported a visitation of 11,220,084. Attendance by visitors to visitor centers was 5,833,232. These parks collectively have 163 fulltime positions and 129 part-time positions. In addition, 8,338 volunteers also provide visitor services in the parks. A large park like Gettysburg reported 18 fulltime permanent interpretive positions. A USS Monitor Civil War Museum Park will add to this.

The Mt Ida Nature Trail
Location: Between the new railroad station and sloop company, where the Poestenkill empties into the Hudson River.

A greenway hiking trail system should begin at the train station and run up the southern bank of the stream, until it reaches Mt Ida Falls. Here it can be incorporated into a larger trail system at the falls, proposed a few years ago, but dumped by the city.

Burden Iron Museum Complex
Location: Burden Museum off Polk

The Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway manages the Burden Museum. Several new buildings should be constructed with this main facility acting as the centerpiece and forming a horseshoe shape complex (remove the jail first). Each building would house a museum dedicated to one of the industrial giants of the city, e.g. steel making (first Bessemer steel), nail making (brought Henry Burden to Troy) cast iron stoves, valves, and horseshoes, for example. The current office building can continue to be the central operating facility for an educational program that promotes the unique and important 19th century iron age of Troy to the world (which they do now).

Don't think this has international significance? Last week a tour given by Gateway Director Tom Carroll had more than 60 of the leading horseshoe makers and farriers in the world (as far away as Argentina), including our Mayor, County Supervisor, and the great-great-grand daughter of Henry Burden himself, all exploring Burden's upper works.

Horseshoe Commons
Location. South of the Burden Museum.

This complex of five buildings is what remains of a much larger complex, the Burden Lower Works. Here horseshoes were made, stored, and shipped around world. These buildings are unique architecturally by having truss roofs, but the buildings are falling down. Of course, the city owns them.

This complex should be renovated into a Quincy Market style complex with a miniature golf course on the north end. A rail, which runs along the length of the longest building, can be used by the proposed trolley system and can make daily runs from here to the train station to Congress Street.

By the way, the new tourist train from Rensselaer to Troy runs past all these sites allowing easy access for visitors.

Next week? Peripheral visions.