Albany Bicentennial Tablet No. 41 – Clinton Avenue

Bicentennial Tablet No. 41 was a simple commemoration of Clinton Avenue – and an unhelpful one at that, as it didn’t even bother to indicate which Clinton the avenue was named for:

Bronze tablet, 7×16 inches, corner North Pearl street. Inscription: “Clinton Avenue, formerly Patroon Street—North of this Street was the ‘Old Colonie.’”

This was on the southwest corner, and was in fine condition in 1914, when the Albany Argus took note of the fate of the markers. The building that once stood on that corner is long since gone, and it is parking now. But, happily, the marker made its way across the street and is on the wall of the Palace Theater. The actual language varied a little bit, but not much, from the copy presented by the Bicentennial Committee.

It would be nice if the marker told us when the name was changed to Clinton Avenue, and why. There are two major candidates for anything named Clinton in these parts – George Clinton, the first governor of New York State (as well as a general, member of the Assembly, and ultimately Vice President of the United States), and DeWitt Clinton, governor and prime proponent of the Erie Canal. Despite extensive searching, we couldn’t find a definitive source on which Clinton the avenue was named for.

The best we can offer is a column by Albany columnist/wag Charley Mooney that says, without providing a source, that Patroon Street was renamed for DeWitt Clinton in 1863, and that the separate Clinton Street is in honor of George.

Unfortunately, we have to cast some doubt on Mooney’s accuracy, as the name had already been changed to Clinton Avenue by 1861 – and if he got the date wrong, did he get the attribution wrong as well?

Patroon Street was, for a very long time, the marker of the southern limits of “the Colonie,” as it ran outside the stockade around Albany. The Colonie was essentially the district north of the city. The name “Colonie” came and went – a village in 1804, a town in 1808, and then, in 1815, it was split between the city of Albany, which annexed what is now the northern part of the city, and the town of Watervliet. Then the town of Watervliet, unhappy with being controlled by West Troy politics, was split off and designated as Colonie in 1895. West Troy took the opportunity to be called Watervliet.

Clinton Avenue was graded in 1864, as was reported in February 1865: “The grading of Clinton avenue necessitated the removal of the shade trees about Bleecker Reservoir, which had attained a large size and were in a healthy state. They were carefully removed, but owing to the excessive drought, and partly from their remaining for so long a period in deep pits, a large number of them died.” that was from the city water works.