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New York - Troy Troy (34 alt., 49,170 pop.) stretches for seven miles along the eastern bank of the Hudson at the head of river navigation, opposite the junction with the Barge Canal. The mass of nondescript brick and wood buildings at the city's southern line gives way to a section of more stately homes of the Victorian era, Sage Park, public buildings, and the business district. Beyond are the high, confining walls of the shirt factories, and north of them is the residential section of old Lansingburgh. In the downtown area the streets run directly north-south and castwest, with the east-west thoroughfares south of Liberty Street bearing consecutively the names of the Presidents from Washington to Polk, intercepted only by Ida Street, named for Mount Ida, the 360-foot buttress of Cambrian rock and glacial clay that is the center of the municipal Prospect Park, and Canal Avenue on the south bank of the Poestenkill. Eastward, modern residential sections stretch toward the Taconic hills in a maze of short streets. Almost hidden by the bulk of factory walls are the Poestenkill and Wynantskill, swift streams that were the first sources of power in the community. Troy is an industrial, educational, and shopping center. There are 73 miles of paved streets, and a mile of new concrete docks bordering the 150-year-old harbor. Six public parks totaling 220 acres contain athletic fields, a golf course, and swimming pools. Besides its public school system, the city has Russell Sage College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the Emma Willard School. In 1609 a longboat from Henry Hudson's Half Moon explored north as far as the site of Troy. The crew found the flatland at the head of navigation planted in corn and beans, the cornstalks acting as poles for the bean vines. Pa-an-pa-ack, the Indian name of the site, has been translated as field of standing corn. The site was part of the patroonship granted to Kiliaen Van Rensselaer by the Dutch West India Company. For 120 years Troy existed as the meadowland of stolid Dutch farmers, a green ribbon within sound of the Mohawk's falls and backed by the soft swellings of the Berkshires. In 1785 the greater part of the city site lay in three farms owned by the descendants of Derick Vanderheyden. The rent demanded by the Van Rensselaers was three bushels and three pecks of wheat and three fat hens or capons annually. The Lansings, northerly neighbors and relatives of the Vanderheydens, laid out their land in building lots shortly before the Revolution and established the village of Lansingburgh, first known as New City. A lively trade sprang up between Albany and the Lansings' settlers in the years following Burgoyne's defeat. After the Revolution Benjamin Thurber purchased a lot at the intersection of the river roadand the Hoosick road and opened a general store, which he called the Bunch of Grapes. Captain Stephen Ashley leased the Matthias Vanderheyden home which stood at what is now the corner of Division and River Streets, and turned it into a tavern. Jacob D. Vanderheyden, owner of the middle farm, for a while opposed settlement was but finally persuaded to lay out his holding in building lots. The land was surveyed for a town site in 1786. Philadelphia, a city of regular squares, was adopted as a model, and, except for the curving of the river road, now River Street, the plan was followed. Vanderheyden insisted that the village carry his name, but the half dozen houses were popularly known as Ashley's Ferry or Ferry Hook. The name Troy was adopted at a public meeting in Ashley's Tavern on January 5, 1789. Jacob Vanderheyden, reconciled to town building, rebelled anew against the name, and for years. gave his address as ' Vanderheyden alias Troy.' The townspeople were sober and intent, worshipping on Sundays even when there was but one man in the village who could make a prayer. In 1791, 64 Trojans took a step toward dominance of the area by subscribing 1,000 pounds toward construction of the Rensselaer County courthouse. Bricks were first made in the locality in 789; about the same year a dam and flume were built on the Poestenkill to operate the first paper mill in northern New York. Packet lines carried freight and passengers to New York City. In 1796 Troy was granted a post office, and in 1798 it was incorporated as a village. The Troy-Schenectady toll road, begun in 1802, provided a direct route from the West to the head of navigation on the Hudson and opened the Troy market to Palatine and Dutch farmers along the Mcihawk. By 1806 Troy had a population of 3,200, including 80 free Negroes and 79 slaves. The War of 1812 brought the settlement one of the largest arsenals of the United States, now the Watervliet Arsenal, and immortalized Samuel Wilson, who supplied the soldiers quartered near by with what they called 'Uncle Sam's beef,' as the original 'Uncle Sam.' War trade, the beginning of iron manufacture, the unbroken stream of New England emigrants passing through on their way west, stimulated growth; and in 1816 a city charter was granted by the State legislature. During the next decade, three people moved to the city who became leaders in three Nation-wide movements. The era of Amos Eaton, Emma Willard, and Henry Burden was Troy's golden age. Eaton, who spurted public interest in mechanical and scientific development, was appointed senior professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1824. Emma Willard, pioneer in liberal education for women, brought her school to Troy in 1821. Henry Burden, who came to Troy in 1822, by his inventions stimulated the city's iron industry. The first bell foundry in Troy began operations in 1825; the first stoveplates were manufactured in 1821. With the opening of the Erie and Champlain Canals began the smudged confusion of tugboats, barges, and cranes that still persists along the Troy water front. Charles Veasie and Orsamus Eaton opened coach shops that for years led the trade in these ornate vehicles. It was estimated in 1845 that 5,000 Eaton coaches were in use in North and South America. Troy's population jumped from 5,264 in 1820 to 11,556 in 1830. In the first months of 1838, hard on a national panic, the city subscribed to all the stock of the proposed Schenectady & Troy Railroad in the hope of becoming a railroad center. Constructed with the first H-section iron rails laid in the United States, and well ballasted, the road was completed in 1842 and was pronounced the most comfortable then in use. But it proved a financial failure, was sold, and later was merged with the New New York Central. Coachmaker Eaton tried his hand at passenger cars for the new road. They were clumsy in comparison with modern coaches but so much superior to those in use on the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad that' the firm received orders for much of the equipment used on the dozen lines built in the State during the next decade. In 1825 Mrs. Hannah Lord Montague, a Troy housewife, developed a detachable collar for men's shirts; according to tradition she cut the dirty collars off her husband's shirts to save herself the trouble of washing the entire garment, and thereby created a new industry. Ebenezer Brown first began the manufacture of detachable collars in 1829, and in 1834 Lyman Bennett opened the first successful collar factory. Further stimulus was given to the trade by the introduction of cuffs in 1845 and the sewing machine in 1852. During the 1850's Troy surged into national prominence as an industrial center, although it never passed its old rival, Albany, in size. Construction work on the canals and railroads drew the first contingents of Irish immigrants, and industries later attracted additional thousands of them. By 1860 the population was 39,235. The migrations that founded the city had pushed on 3,000 miles to the Pacific Ocean; iron products and 'fancy clothes' followed, and Troy supplied both. The boom period was intensified by the Civil War. Across the river in Watervliet the arsenal turned out ammunition and guns for the Union Armies, giving employment to hundreds of men. Henry Burden's horseshoe machine clanked out footwear for cavalry and artillery mounts at the rate of 60 a minute. The regiment of the Second New York Volunteers, which left the city in May 1861, was the first to land on Virginia soil during the war. Workmen in local mills turned out plates for the Monitor. Troy troops, entrenched at Fortress Monroe, watched the Monitor battle the Merrimac off the Virginia coast on March 9, 1862. During the Civil War women drawn into the laundry and collar industries of the city developed their own union. In 1868 the powerful Collar Laundry Workers of Troy gave $1,000 to the Troy Iron Moulders Association and $800 to striking bricklayers in New York City. Coupled with this, they forced increases in their own wages from $2-$3 to $12-$14 a week. In 1869, however, a strike split the union members into factions and the movement disintegrated. Visiting Europe in 1864, Horatio Winslow purchased the rights to manufacture and sell Bessemer steel in the United States and began production at his company's Troy works. Introduction of the metal brought a new order of mass haulage by rail, and Troy became the steel center of the country. Its supremacy was doomed, however, when in 1873 Andrew Carnegie set up a steel mill 12 miles from Pittsburgh. Trade with the North Country and the establishment of knitting mills brought hundreds of French-Canadian families to Troy between 1860 and 1910. Italians settled in the city during the same period, supplying the labor for railroad construction and municipal improvements. After the expansion of 1901, when Lansingburgh was added to the city under a second-class charter, population swept to a peak of 76,000. The city has lost its nineteenth-century pre-eminence in the manufacture of steel, wrought-iron, and foundry products; and changed conditions of transportation have diverted much of its jobbing trade. But Troy is still an important producer of valves, fire hydrants, and engineering and surveying instruments, as well as collars and shirts, and produces a substantial volume of women's wear.