Newsletter - Spring 2024
Gateway Looks Ahead to 50th Anniversary
This is an important and exciting year for the Gateway and the Burden Iron Works Museum! We were established in 1974, so this year is our 50th anniversary as a New York State-chartered museum. We will celebrate this first 50 years with a variety of events culminating in a special Fall Gala on September 26. Rather than honor specific individuals this year, we are calling on all founders, former employees and board members, and friends to join us at the Country Club of Troy for a party to mark this important occasion. The details for the Gala remain to be worked out, but we will celebrate in style! Watch our Facebook page and Summer Newsletter for the latest news.
Restoration work at the Burden Iron Works Museum continues to move forward (see next article). We expect to be able to open the museum to visitors again in mid-June, depending on the contractors’ progress. We will announce the opening date and visiting hours on our Facebook page and on our website.
Finally, although our current restoration project is progressing nicely, there was not enough money in our grant and matching funds to include the new air conditioning system needed to protect our collections. We are working with our architects on the specifics of the project before launching a capital campaign to raise the necessary funds. Stay tuned!
Museum Renovation Work Marks Significant Progress
A relatively mild winter has allowed our contractor, Adam Bunkoff General Contractors, to make better-than-expected progress on Burden Iron Works Museum renovation projects. Nearly half of the windows, storm windows and window trim has been restored or replaced. The Bunkoff crew installed plastic “cocoons” over the windows to allow work to proceed on the coldest days of the Winter. The main doors on the east face of the building are undergoing restoration off-site and will be reinstalled after the new steps are completed. The most dramatic part of the project is the removal and rebuilding of the original stone steps on the east face of the building. In addition, the steps down to the basement dispensary entry and its shed roof have been removed and are in the process of restoration as well. The basement steps and retaining wall will be cast in concrete. (Click on an image below for a full image view.)
New foundations have been poured for the east steps, and work on the brick and stone trim begun. Also slated for replacement are decorative iron railings that went missing in past years. Less visible but still important are the translucent insulation panels to be installed in the attic over the laylight, which, along with the installation of insulation over the alcove and in other attic spaces, will tighten the building envelope and help to save energy.
The contractors expect to be finished by late Spring. Follow the progress on Facebook!
Gateway Newsletters Through the Years
As we celebrate our 50th anniversary this year, it is interesting to look back at Gateway newsletters over time to get a feel for what was newsworthy, especially in the early, formative years. Gateway staff and volunteers compiled a collection of printed newsletters dating from the very first one in 1974 to the last one in 2008 that chronicles the highlights of our past.
Over the years the newsletters had different titles, frequencies and formats. The first issue in 1974 is dated December 16 and is titled News of the Gateway. It appears to be a mimeographed copy of the minutes from the November 21 Gateway membership meeting. The next newsletter on file is from March 1976; it has evolved into a “real” newsletter with articles and illustrations. Also, the title has changed to news of the Gateway (not a typo). We have copies of newsletters dated January 1977, January 1978, and March-April 1978.
The 1978 issue promised that the newsletter would be published approximately every two months. In July 1978 the Gateway launched another newsletter, The Burden Report, which covered “mainly news of staff activities for members of the Hudson-Mohawk Industrial Gateway.” The Burden Report reverted to a mimeograph format with few illustrations. It was published in parallel with news of the Gateway. The next iteration of the newsletter was Gateway Report, starting in early 1986 and running through Spring 1995. It began as a small-format mimeograph before transitioning to a full-size printed newsletter in 1988.
The final version of the printed newsletter, and the one many of our readers can recall, was Burden’s Best, launched in 1999. This was intended to be printed quarterly and evolved into a newsletter with a green first-page banner on buff paper. Burden’s Best was printed through 2008, when publication of newsletters stopped. After a thirteen-year gap, the quarterly Gateway newsletter, now simply called Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway Newsletter, was resurrected in 2021 in digital format only, as you know.
An article in the Summer Newsletter will review Gateway history as depicted in the newsletters. Click on the individual images below for an enlarged view of the cover.
Other Organizations Also Celebrating Anniversaries This Year
The year of the Gateway’s founding, 1974, was a prolific year for the establishment of organizations dedicated to historic preservation. Both the Preservation League of New York State and Historic Albany Foundation were also founded that year and are celebrating their 50th anniversaries this year. In addition, of course, 2024 marks the bicentennial of the founding of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy in 1824 by scientist Amos Eaton and patroon Stephen Van Rensselaer. RPI was the first higher educational institute in the US to grant an engineering degree. Generations of RPI students studied the Burden Water Wheel, and one – George Washington Gale Ferris – used it as inspiration for his eponymous Ferris Wheel. Over the years many RPI graduates have contributed to the industrial development of the region. Troy iron mill owners (and partners in the building of the USS Monitor) John Griswold and John Winslow both served as (honorary) presidents of RPI.