Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/64

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24
Albany

the city of New York. Not until the twentieth session of the Legislature was the long dispute settled. The geographical advantages of Albany finally carried the day, and for the last hundred years the site of the frontier fort has been a political arena and an illustrious seat of legislative and judicial power.

The Albany of "modern times," as the phrase is understood in our American life in which everything is new except human nature, has preserved few of the ancient landmarks. The only souvenirs are the bronze tablets which were devised at the Bicentennial in 1886, and which now designate the historic sites in the city. If one, reverent of ancient and vanished things, make pilgrimage to the tablet near the curb on the lower edge of the Capitol Park (a block above the site of Fort Frederick), to the one on the corner of Broadway and Steuben Street (the site of the northeast gate), and to the one near the curb on lower Broadway two blocks from State Street (the site of the southeast gate), he will define quite accurately the girdle of the palisadoes which protected old Albany.

If he pass the memorial of the northeast gateway, a place of memorable outgoings and