One reason (among many) that this project now takes so long and so much time passes between posts is that here in the later markers, there’s just so little to say – we keep digging, thinking we’ll find some relevant little tidbit or finally discover the meaning behind a naming, but more often than not at this point, we draw a blank. So it is with Monroe Street.
So here’s another bicentennial marker giving us the tiniest amount of information about one of the city’s older streets, and skipping over something that the Bicentennial Committee in 1886 might actually have been able to discern: when and why the name was changed.
Tablet No. 42—Monroe Street
Bronze tablet, 7×16 inches, south side of Dutch Reformed Church, inscription: “Monroe Street, formerly Van Schaick Street.”
This is affixed to the First Church in Albany; originally it was on the northwest corner of Monroe and North Pearl, but Monroe no longer goes through to Pearl as a street.
A resolution to change the name to Monroe street was introduced in the Common Council in 1867, and passed in March 1868 – but the fairly skimpy reporting didn’t indicate any reason, or confirm which Monroe it was being renamed for. It’s commonly presumed it would have been for President James Monroe, but there are no other presidential streets nearby, and Monroe had no Albany connections, so that’s just conjecture.
On the 1854 Gould map, Van Schaick is shown as something like an extension of Von Tromp, starting just a little bit north on North Pearl and extending just a block or two (depends how you count) to the west, crossing Chapel and ending at an unmarked street that today is called Theatre Row. Today, Monroe only runs from Chapel; the bit that connected with North Pearl is just a pathway on the First Church property.
Van Schaick, according to Stefan Bielinski at the State Museum’s listing of old Albany street names, was likely named for Gerrit W. Van Schaick, who owned land along the Foxenkill that ran where Sheridan Avenue is today.
Even as late as 1917, legal notices regarding property mentioned that the addresses had formerly been Van Schaick Street.