NEB&W Layout Guide - Final Thoughts

Last Update: 2008-11-11

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Not only the club, but the school, has a long railroad connection. Stephen Van Rensselaer, the founder, was the first president of the Mohawk & Hudson RR, the first railroad in New York State. Van Rensselaer was also the last of the Patroons, a feudal land system left over from the period of Dutch Colonialism. Despite his upholding of the medieval patroon system, Van Rensselaer was forward-looking. At that time, railroads were still in their shaky experimental stage, and represented a risky financial investment. The promoter of the M&H RR, George Featherstonehaugh, asked his friend, Van Rensselaer, to add his highly respected name to the venture.

An early RPI alumnus and Troy native, Theodore Judah, was the person almost single-handedly responsible for the greatest project in the whole age of railroading, the building of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. He persisted over a course of many years, despite being labeled "Crazy Judah." He also worked on the Troy & Schenectady RR, the Central Vermont RR, the Rutland RR, the New York, New Haven & Hartford RR and the Erie RR, before undertaking promotion of the line that would eventually tie the nation into a unified whole. (One of "The Big Four" financial supporters of the project was Troy native Leland Stanford, who later went on to become Governor of California and President of the Central Pacific RR. The Central Pacific RR was organized by Judah as the western end of the transcontinental line.)

Rensselaer counts ten railroad presidents among its alumni from the 19th century, including Alexander Cassatt, a major force on the nation's largest rail system, the Pennsylvania RR, and two presidents of the Imperial Government Railways of Japan.

As the great age of steam-era railroading began to draw to a close after WWII, other alumni were on hand to document its passage, most notably William Middleton (The Time Of The Trolley), William Edson (Railroad Names), and Jim Shaughnessy The Rutland Road and The Delaware & Hudson). Other Rensselaer people have worked to preserve the whole industrial heritage which went hand-in-hand with the rail network, including architect Jack Waite and his wife, Diana Waite, an import voice in the preservation movement, and Thomas Phelan, Dean of Rensselaer's School of Humanities & Social Sciences. (For more information, see our History of RPI.)

Since the Hudson-Mohawk area was such an early leader in the Industrial Revolution, it isn't surprising it has also been an early leader in the Industrial Archeology movement. The first study conducted by the Historic American Engineering Record was the 1969 Report of the Mohawk-Hudson Area Survey. (HAER is run by the National Park Service.) Jack Waite and Bernd Foerster, Acting Dean of Rensselaer's School of Architecture were among those instrumental in launching the Survey. The Society of Industrial Archeology was started as a result of these early efforts sometime later.

The State of New York was approached with the idea of setting up an urban cultural park in the Hudson-Mohawk area, to be named "RiverSpark" because it was here that the rivers sparked the Industrial Revolution. This idea led to New York State's Urban Cultural Park System, of 14 urban parks across the state, to help preserve our state's heritage.