by
G. Jack Urso
May 8, 2024, is the last day of the last semester of The College of Saint Rose before it closes down for good.
Marcelle
Hall, located at 444 Western Avenue, in Albany, NY, is, at least until the end of this week, the home of a scattered, dwindling, group of faculty members for the
College of Saint Rose, slated to officially close at the end of
the current academic year, 2023-2024, after 103 years in existence, and, ironically, also marking its 100th graduation ceremony.
English Department poster.
A
converted, large, single family, turn-of-the century (circa 1900) house, Marcelle
Hall, on the campus of The College of Saint Rose, like dozens of other similar
homes in the neighborhood, had been taken over by the college over the past 103
years of. Once the home the English department, by the time the college announced
it was closing at the end of the Fall 2023 semester, only four of the five offices were occupied, only two of them by English professors, and one of them packed up his office and left the day after the college announced it was closing. One office was usually empty. Adjunct faculty were relegated to the
nosebleed section of the third-floor attic, a converted large, open-space, former
one-bedroom apartment.
English Department posters.
The English department secretary seems to have retired about a dozen years ago and was never replaced. Her desk and office still preserved
like a time capsule with photos of long-gone faculty, old VHS tapes, something
called a fax machine, and other obsolescent relics of a time not so long ago. Other
English department personnel were dispersed to different locations on campus rather
than being holed up together in one dusty old house.
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English Department posters. |
As
someone who has worked in higher education for over three decades in various
capacities, I have grown unaccountably attached to old English Department offices.
One college I’ve worked at for 20 years still has some of the same posters and
prints on the walls as when I first started, and Marcelle Hall is no different.
I’ve seen posters and notices on the walls going back to 2006 (Global Faulkner, see below, right) announcing
various concerts, conferences, guest speakers, plays, and readings while
silently guarding stacks of back issues of The New
Yorker, shelves of English textbooks, boxes of old student papers, and
committee meeting minutes going back to the 1970s.
English Department posters.
This
is probably endemic to most colleges. It seems an almost subconscious ritual
symptomatic of academics mired in the study of the minutiae of the English
language — leaving a mark somewhere to prove that you existed, that you worked
here, that something important to you happened here — right here, in this place.
And
in a few weeks, this place will no longer exist.
Pine
Hills
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A map of Pine Hills from William Kennedy’s book, O Albany (444 Western Ave. in red). |
Having
grown up in the Pine Hills section of Albany, NY, I must have passed 444
Western Avenue thousands of times. My scout troop, Troop 2, met at the Episcopalian
church, St. Andrews, on the corner. It was on my way to Albany High School. In
the 1990s, I lived a couple blocks away on South Main Avenue, passing it on my daily walks. In 1998, while
working as a program coordinator for The Altamont Program, an addiction
treatment center, I helped set up an on-campus house for female recovering
addicts attending The College of Saint Rose. It was just a few doors up from Marcelle Hall, but by the time I started at Saint Rose in 2018 it had been taken over by another college department. Dozens of homes in the surrounding neighborhood were slowly absorbed by the
college in the preceding 103 years, creating a small community within the city.
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A student project. |
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The mural, before restoration, 2012 (photo, G. J. Urso, 2012). The faded color is due to age as well as pressure washing prior to the restoration. |
One
iconic relic in the neighborhood familiar to several generations of Saint Rose
students is the mural on the corner of Madison and South Main which shows the
neighborhood how it existed in the late 1970s. I watched it go up during the
summer of 1977 and in 2012 helped restore it. The mural captures local business
at the time, like Mack Drugs, Clapp’s Bookstore, the Madison Theater, the Petit
Paris restaurant, Sttigg’s Ice Cream Parlor, and Ann Peterson’s Beauty Salon —
all gone now save for the theater which has been renamed a couple times since
the 1990s. In a city of graffiti artists, it is notable that in the nearly 50
years it has been up, vandals have respected the artist’s work and left it
alone.
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The mural, over a decade after restoration, May 2024 (photo, G.J. Urso). |
Saint
Rose extends down towards the city where the city campus of UAlbany picks it up
on its eastern border. Running parallel to Western and Madison Avenues a
half-mile to the southwest is New Scotland Avenue, both framing the Pine Hills
neighborhood. Along New Scotland Avenue, on one end, one can find the Albany
College of Pharmacy, Albany Law School, Albany Medical College, and The Sage
Colleges Albany Campus. Further along is Maria College and scattered throughout
are the Albany Academies for Boys and Girls and several other public and
private schools. All located within a roughly rectangular area about a mile and
a half square area.
When
the school year is on, the entire area essentially becomes one huge campus. Removing
the city’s second-largest college campus from the equation leaves a huge hole.
Replacing an institution with over one hundred years of history typically takes
about another century, so it is unlikely this delicate mix of college and
community will ever be recreated. While the remaining schools continue, the
closing of Saint Rose signals a sea-change — while other colleges remain, the
Golden Age of Post-War higher education in the city of Albany is over.
444
Western Avenue – Home of the Ebel’s
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Detail from the front door. |
Other department relics include a decorative wall
plate of a snow scene, a GEICO Caveman promotional mouse pad circa 2008, and a
New Yorker refrigerator magnet circa early 2000s.
The home has some unique features, like a butler’s pantry that
provides easy access to the dining room featuring a bay window. The pantry was turned
into a bathroom probably in the 1970s renovation. The living room, first converted into an apartment and then an office, features an entranceway with two small Roman columns, a not uncommon
feature for turn-of-the-century upper middle/upper class city homes, with the area behind it walled off and filled
in with floor-to-ceiling self-adhesive mirror panels — another relic of its ‘70s
conversion into an apartment.
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Living room décor. A former entranceway, there is just a wall behind the mirrors now. |
Naturally, one begins to wonder about the history of the place.
The Albany City Directories in the public library begin at 1950. The listing
for that year indicates a Harry F. Ebel as the homeowner operating an
unidentified business at the location. In fact, many of the former grand homes
operating nearby on Western Avenue seem to have been converted into places of
business by 1950. Harry lived there with his wife Mary through 1968 when he
died at 75. His wife, who followed him in 1973, was still living at 444 Western
Avenue at the time of her death. By then, the neighborhood must have seemed to be overrun with college students.
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Window in hallway. |
Harry, in fact, according the census records, originally lived on nearby
Hamilton Street, just on the border between Saint Rose and UAlbany. Populated by tightly
packed working-class homes, the 1930 census shows Harry and Mary living there at the
time. None of the census data or directory information I found through
1973 ever shows any children or other residents living with them. I was able to confirm by comparing census records with Harry's V.A. Master Index File Card (see below) that he was living at 511 Hamilton Street in 1918 when he was drafted into the army.
The 1930 census (see below) shows Harry and Mary living at 511 Hamilton Street with a Kirchner family a couple doors down from where possibly Harry's parents and siblings still lived at 501 Hamilton, which is inferred by the similarity of their last names and Harry's middle name with the first name of the father listed at 501 Hamilton — Frederick. At 511 Hamiliton (which one can still visit virtually courtesy of Zillow), when Harry and Mary lived there, it would have been eight people living in that tiny home. Yet, 501 Hamilton is a larger home with fewer people living there (five, according to the census). Were the Ebel family living at 511 Hamilton in 1918 when Harry was drafted? Why were Harry and Mary living with the Kirchner's and not his family in a larger, if still crowded, home? Curiosities, lost to time.
All of these locations lay within a half–mile area at most.
Harry and Mary not only went up the social ladder, but onto larger houses, and
alone, never wandering far from Harry’s home stomping grounds. Given the
cramped, lower-class origins of the homes on Hamilton Street, 444 Western
Avenue, with two or three times the floor space (including the finished attic
apartment, possibly former servants' quarters), must have seemed like a mansion
to them.
For over two decades the Ebels lived at 444 Western Avenue and for
at least fifty years lived in the same neighborhood as adults. Both lived into
their 70s and Harry, except for the brief time he served in the Army in WWI,
never moved more than a half mile away from where he grew up. Harry and Mary
must have seemed like permanent fixtures in the neighborhood. When Harry died
April 9, 1968, a fifty-word obituary appeared in the Albany Times Union the next day (see image on left), suggesting a not unexpected passing.
Nothing in the brief obituary reveals where he worked, what his interests were, or if he had any children, and the only reason you’re hearing of him
today is because I spent several hours searching through microfilm archives and old, falling apart,
city directories in a forgotten, back room of a public library.
In fifty years, you should be so lucky.
Closing Down
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A departing note for faculty leaving the third-floor adjunct office. |
In addition to being raised in the neighborhood and teaching there myself, my father, sister, and a step-sister, also received their training as teachers at Saint Rose. So, the closure of the college affects my family on many levels.
Unlike my father and sisters, my involvement with higher education has almost always been just an afterthought for me. It was never my career goal, just something I fell into. My BA is in
Communications; a field, however, I worked in mostly as a freelancer. I was
certified as a NYS English teacher, but only so I could teach in Adult Education (high
school equivalency programs). My MA is in Liberal Studies (history and
literature), which probably doesn’t exist as a degree any longer, and which I only got so I
could keep my teacher’s certification for Adult Education. I began working in
administrative staff positions in colleges in 1989 but didn’t start teaching
at that level until 2005 when a friend who was remodeling the
kitchen of the head of the English Department of a local college suggested me
when she asked if he knew anyone who could teach as she was short staffed the
coming semester.
Compared to those who spent the entirety of their education
pursuing a career as an English professor, I could only ever be an outlier,
even if I’ve taught at four colleges, up to three during the same semester, and
up to six or seven courses a semester — more than the four or maybe five courses
most full-time faculty usually teach. I’ve taught 100- through 300-level
courses, including Comp I, Comp II, Public Speaking, and Technical
Communication, and am fully conversant in four different online curriculum
delivery platforms. In addition to those four colleges, I worked in staff
positions at two others.
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Before Power Point, poster board, clippings, and a felt-tipped pen, were the state-of-the art in presentation visual aids. This student's project probably dates back to the late 1990s. |
Yet, despite that, and having had a 25-year long career as a reporter, editor, and freelancer, and having earned more from writing than most of
my colleagues who teach writing, I remain on the periphery. I get it. English
majors are a dime a dozen, and I wasn't one, so I am grateful for the opportunities I’ve had and
hope I served well.
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Front porch sign. |
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Not my name on my ID or paycheck, not my email address, and never knew I had a phone number. I guess should have looked at this several years ago. |
I’ve been lucky to land another adjunct job, and this time back in
Adult Education where I started out so long ago. There’s been talk in recent
weeks of another college taking over part of Saint Rose’s assets and keeping it
open as an extension of their institution. Maybe, maybe not — I hope so for the
sake of my colleagues, but I’m skeptical. What happened to Saint Rose is part
of an ongoing trend with small colleges impacted by COVID and a changing
marketplace. Great colleges which produced great leaders are being closed down.
The impact will not be fully felt for a generation.
English Department posters.
The College of Saint Rose, a four-year school with a prestigious
academic reputation, represented for me that as an adjunct I had finally been
accepted. I later began teaching at another four-year college, but Saint Rose
kicked the door open, and that it was a college I literally grew up around makes
it even more special, and sadder that it will soon disappear.
Name plates in the entranceway. |
Before my last class this past December, I lingered a bit in Marcelle
Hall, but there was no real point. I hadn’t gotten any mail since COVID
and my office hours, which were on Zoom and from my home office, were done for
the semester. After class, as I briskly walked through the crisp, late autumn
air, a student from a previous semester ran by me. I thought to call out, but
as quickly as I saw her, she was off on her way.
No time for goodbyes, I mused
silently.
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College ID. |
My office key and ID are now just more relics from yet another
college where I no longer work, sitting in a box with other office keys and other
IDs that no longer serve any use. If I was asked twenty or thirty years ago if
I would one day teach at The College of Saint Rose, I would have responded that is
just a dream . . . but now it is just a memory.
And, eventually, just like that student rushing by, even that will
be gone.
Don't believe me? Just ask Harry and Mary.
● ● ●
Note: The posters pictured throughout this essay were photographed on the walls of Marcelle Hall on the campus of The College of Saint Rose in December 2023.
Having grown up in the Pine Hills neighborhood the closing of St. Rose is both heartbreaking in of itself as well as the effect on the neighborhood. Your research is insightful. Your comparison with the Ebels and their home and their lives is poignant and telling. It will happen to us all. Good article.
ReplyDeleteExcellent ending.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
Delete