On an August Market Day in 1783, the Albany air buzzed with energy and excitement. Market and Court street were busy and crowded with people in motion. The commotion began with the familiar sight of country people bringing grains, produce, and livestock to be valued at the city market. From all directions, farmers and husbandmen converged on Albany - their boats and wagons loaded with animals, farm, and forest products that for the past eight years mostly had been pre-empted by the war effort. With the Articles of Peace already in place, these Rensselaerswyck and Watervliet farmers and those from beyond as well understood that everything they grew and gathered still would be much in demand. But now, country harvests could be sold on the open market instead of merely turned over to Continental commissaries. At every store and shop, country people were met by merchants and artisans eager to trade. Many of these businessmen were familiar - some were hailing them as "cousin" and "uncle." But an even larger number of the anxious storekeepers had been in Albany for a decade or less - only since the beginning of the war. These new traders with strange sounding voices caught their ear for they offered the best prices and most interesting items in exchange for country products.

In the street, long-standing Albanians rubbed elbows with an extraordinary number of new people - immigrants from Europe, Yankees, and other Americans of all descriptions who were willing to pay almost any price for the goods they needed as they headed out to new homes in the North and West. For the first time in years, only a few uniformed soldiers were visible on the street - quite a contrast to the years since 1775 when hundreds of new men and boys in red and blue were jammed into the city. Some of these recently discharged patriots were returning home. Others had come to Albany to stay. The overall mood was busy and defined by people in motion - mainline Albany people; a flood of transients - some selling, others buying; government employees and officials; some short-time soldiers; and many new faces moving into newly vacant old city buildings and petitioning the common council for permission to build on every parcel of available land.

Earlier that summer, General George Washington had paid a final visit to wartime Albany. He was accompanied by Governor Clinton, and an entourage of distinguished patriots. Hailed by the city fathers and honored with fired salutes, bell ringing, and a great public banquet, this symbolic end of the war left Albany people with a feeling of belonging to a new nation for the first time. Although few knew what tomorrow would bring, most Albany people looked to the future guided by feelings ranging from exhilaration to despair.

With so many new people moving in, through, and out of Albany, the social and economic dynamics of the community itself might have seemed a bit obscured. However, the end of the war represented a watershed or benchmark in the history of the Albany community. The ordeal of the last decade and the local impact of the three Revolutions as they have been unfolded in preceding chapters had made Albany a quite different community as it approached the centennial of its chartering.

The riverfront was a particular hot spot. Sloops and other boats were packed in at the city docks. All were unloading people and loading all kinds of harvests and processed products ranging from furs to wheat and lumber to potash. For the first time in a decade, Albany skippers could sail their cargoes to other American ports and to the Caribbean. For the first time, investors were making plans to trade directly with Europe and Asia. The city ferries could not keep up with the flood of newcomers who waited impatiently on east bank landings. WHAT ELSE WAS HAPPENING? Albany was a boom town and everyone seemed in a hurry to make the most of every opportunity.

The Dutch Reformed Church, once the focal point of community life, now was ignored by most of the people who passed through Albany's main intersection - except to be annoyed by the inconvenience caused by its presence. New, larger buildings - some three and four stories high were under construction all along the city's main streets. Even more smaller, less substantial homes, shops, and sheds popped up on the ring of roads around the old urban core while new streets were opened and old ones extended to accommodate new housing and business needs. OTHER BUILDING p>SCENE: Persons banished - last batch of political outcasts juxtaposed with Yankee - European immigration as the Tories they were being rounded up to be deported, many others were making plans to leave also (old Dutch, adventurous, opportunists) Lansingburgh, Troy, Utica, north, west where else

Although they were among the first to leave, refugee New Yorkers like Aaron Burr, William Duer, and xxxx other refugees moved to countryside like James Livingston. oldtimers and newcomers some of wartime pop stayed new blood Gershom Mott stayed to die.

As America moved into the nineteenth century, a new nation emerged from its colonial cocoon and already had embarked on a second stage of development characterized by rapid growth and inspired by themes of immigration, innovation, and industrialization. The Second Federal Census for the city of Albany documented these changes in a number of poignant ways.

The beginning of Albany's boom time was reflected in an almost doubling of its population from 3,498 in 1790 to 5,349 a decade later. The quality of the change was even more revealing. For the first time, its New Netherland ancestry residents no longer were a majority of the city's demography. Long-standing names of xxx xxx and xxx had been replaced by the descendants of the Puritans, by Scottish highlanders, by Irish and French Catholic refugees, by emigres from the German states, and by migrants from each of the other new United States. For the first time, a free black community had become notable with 156 free people of color and 526 slaves - almost all of whom would be free within two decades.

CHAR OF THE CITY'S POPULATION - COMMUNITY ECONOMY EVOLUTION

Albany's physical growth was equally impressive as the city more than quadrupled its maximum stockaded area and its new features complimented the innovative vitality of the community's demography. All traces of the fortified colonial town had vanished. State surveyor Simeon De Witt built a large house on top of Fort Orange. The remnants of the English fort were removed from the middle of State Street. New businesses, offices, and urban residences spread along the river and up the hill for many blocks beyond the colonial core. Two great fires during the 1790s had purged the downtown area of many of its quaint residential buildings and these had been replaced by larger and taller businesses and offices. The old Dutch church which stood in the center of the city's main intersection for a century and a half had been replaced and soon would be torn down. The central streets were paved, the shoreline had been filled-in and improved - adding another block for development along the waterfront, and permitting sloops and barges to tie up along the new Quay Street. Even then, plans were being made to extend the city even further into the Hudson. The New York State government had been meeting in Albany for many years and in 1797 Albany had become the permanent state capital. Although that state government was tiny by modern standards, the concentration of statewide functions in Albany brought many new people to the city to live and to do business.

BANKING

Turnpike Cpys and other investments

CHANGES IN TERMS OF NEW BUILDINGS FOR GOVT CHURCH WORK BUSINESS ENTERPRISE

These changes all had taken place in less than a generation. Twenty-five years earlier, Albany was a community in transition -- emerging from its frontier and pioneer phases -- but without an inkling of what the new would be or who would be around to be new men. (logical since all conditions were new - fruits of 3 Rs)

FINAL PARAGRAPH DRAWING TOGETHER THE THREE REVOLUTIONS MOTIF OF THE OPENING EXPOSITION

silently posted: 2/20/16