McKownville
Improvement Association
- Locations of the Five Mile Tavern and other
old houses on the Albany Country Club property in McKownville
There has been uncertainty as to the location of the
farmhouse used from 1890 to 1895 as the original clubhouse by the
Albany Hunt and Country Club. It was claimed by some that it was the
former Five Mile Tavern on the Kings Highway; others thought it was
another old farmhouse somewhere else nearby. There has also been
some uncertainty as to the exact location of the Five Mile Tavern,
especially relative to the large excavations and structures built
for the State University in the 1960's, after the Albany Country
Club lands were taken by eminent domain and the club evicted. Also,
local opinion by 1940, recorded by William Efner, differed
substantially as to when the Five Mile Tavern was demolished.
The ability to scan and overlay old maps and air photos that is
provided by a computer and image editing software offers an improved
insight into the evidence available. Starting from a base of the
1953 USGS 7½ minute Albany quadrangle map, the older maps can be
positioned, and rescaled, and rotated to fit, using the framework of
main roads which have not changed their center line positions since
the early 19th century. These, and some old deeds and newspaper
reports, provide better evidence as to location and existence of
these old buildings.
The map below (left) shows the evidence for the
location of three old buildings relative to the Club course fairways
and greens.
The Five Mile Tavern and the track of the King's Highway which
passed by the tavern are taken from the 1817 map by Evert
Van Alen of the first 27 Great Lots. This was a map made to
sell the part of the Liberty of Albany extending west from Magazine
Street to just beyond the next tavern along the King's Highway, the
Verrebergh or Seven Mile Tavern. The survey constructed lots all
with 16 chain widths and for most of them a simple rectangular shape
extending from a straight baseline, and was completed by the
professional surveyor Van Alen to high standards of accuracy with
the chain and compass method then used. It is likely that the King's
Highway and the Five and Seven Mile Taverns shown on his map are
accurately located, to a similar standard as the lot boundaries. The
Great lot boundaries can be placed with confidence on the modern
(1953) map because Magazine Street and Western and Washington
Avenues essentially remained in the same positions, and the east
side of Fuller Road south of Lydius Street when first constructed
was along the boundary between Great lots 17 and 18.
(click on the images to view enlarged)
The map above also shows in addition the
trace of the King's Highway from the 1805 survey of John Randel for
the Albany-Schenectady Turnpike. This map includes the position of
the Five Mile Tavern and two adjacent barns (see image below), and
it even shows the position of all the chain survey segment points
along the trace of the Kings Highway. It is notable that the
position of the highway route of the Randel and Van Alen maps does
not in most places deviate one from the other by more than a few
tens of feet. The Randel map also includes the track made by William
McKown from the Five Mile house to his then new Tavern on the Great
Western Turnpike (Christian P LaGrange later built his farmhouse
next to this track). The right hand map above shows the same
information but with the addition of the footprint outlines of the
1968 University buildings. The map confirms that the location of the
18th green was under the southeast corner of the dormitory
quadrangle originally called Indian Quad. This green was claimed by
some to be the former location of the Five Mile Tavern (but see
below).
Excerpt from map of J Randel 1805, used by permission of the
Albany Institute of History and Art
Three mid-19th century maps exist which show for this area the
location of individual houses with owner or occupier names beside
them. The map of the vicinity of Albany and Troy by John Sidney was
published in 1851; it shows the house (then owned by William Cooper)
that was later purchased by William Knowles and sold by him to the
Club in 1895 and became the core of the soon to be much enlarged
clubhouse. While the location on the Sidney map plots some distance
away from the actual position (at the clubhouse), the house is shown
on the correct western side of the Krum Kill stream east branch. Jay
Gould's 1854 map of Albany County also shows this house, but no
others nearby.
The 1851 Sidney map shows two other structures within what became
the Country Club property, one also labelled W Cooper, and located
very close to the position of the Five Mile Tavern given by Van
Alen's map. The other house occurs farther north, in a position next
to the golf course 7th hole green, labelled Heenan (this provides
confirmation of the location of an old house site documented by
William Efner). Both these structures also occur on the map of
the west part of the City of Albany in the 1866 Beers Atlas of
Albany County; the structure near the Five Mile Tavern location
labelled Knause; the other J Archy.
Deeds show that William Cooper
owned in the 1851-54 interval the property in which the two
structures are labelled with his name; he died in 1856 and this
property was sold. Deeds also exist for John Artcher owning property
near the house labelled with his name in 1866, but that house (which
appears consistently located, and therefore accurate) would have
been within another lot, great lot 4, that continued to be owned by
the Cooper family. These maps show occupant names, so a tenant name
is not unlikely, and there are no deeds for these locations in those
intervals that we have found with owners named Heenan, or Knause.
Possibly Knause is a corrupted oral transcription of Enos; the deeds
show no one of that name owned the old Five Mile Tavern, but an Enos
may perhaps have rented it*.
Not far outside the Country Club property, the farmhouse of
Christian P LaGrange was located in the southern part of his land,
the remainder of great lots 16 and 17 after he sold the northern
part of these lots to John Artcher in 1863. This LaGrange farmhouse
is shown on the 1935 Sanborn insurance maps, so its former position,
now at Glenwood Street, is accurately known. It is shown on the 1851
Sidney map; the position being not more than 200 feet away from the
right place on the modern map, which allows some confidence in the
relative accuracy of the other items shown on John Sidney's
pioneering map (extract from this shown below).
The location of the Five Mile Tavern
William Efner records in 1940 that local residents and a Club
employee thought that the site of the Five Mile Tavern was located
under the 18th hole green. The employee attributed persistent
subsidence of the green surface to the presence of the buried
remains. The green site in the 1948 airphoto is located under the
southeast corner of the dormitory quadrangle and would
unquestionably have been destroyed during the university
construction.
However, Efner's own pace and compass map places the site he marks
farther east than the green site observed and located from the 1948
airphoto. Both the Randel and the Van Alen maps also demonstrate
that the location was a few hundred feet farther east than the
green, and does not fall underneath the nearby (former Indian)
quadrangle building footprint. Even the less well constrained
locations of the 1851 and 1866 maps both plot nearby. So we conclude
that the site of the Tavern, and the well on its eastern side, were
not necessarily destroyed in the construction of the University, and
remnant materials might still be buried east of the quadrangle
formerly named Indian, and that this could be investigated by ground
penetrating radar, and even excavation.
When was the Five Mile Tavern destroyed?
We think that the evidence from the old maps indicates that the Five
Mile Tavern continued to exist, as a structure but perhaps not a
tavern, at least to 1866 (the Beers map).
A deed to Anna
Hallenbeck dated July 1869 refers to a dwelling whose location
near the east lot line defined in that deed would allow it to have
been not far (a few tens of feet) from the tavern location on
the Van Alen and Randel maps (and thus the same building), and a
barn mentioned located east of the lot line was very probably part
of the Tavern property prior to this conveyance (in a position
relative to the Tavern consistent with those shown on the Randel
map).
A photo taken about 1890 (in the Morris Gerber collection) shows the
farmhouse
used briefly as the first Country Club clubhouse, the picture
showing four or five carriages of sporty and very un-farm-like
appearance gathered beside it. The large willow tree prominent in
the picture implies that there was a spring nearby, and while there
was a substantial spring near the Five Mile Tavern, marked both on
Van Alen's 1817 map and on the 1851 Sidney map, there is no
suggestion from those or any later map of a spring or stream near
the other farmhouse in the sandy dune land farther north. Then
there is the track shown from the shadows in the picture to pass by
the southern side of the house; both the Van Alen and Randel maps
show this relation for the King's Highway to the Five Mile Tavern,
but the other farmhouse is shown in a similar position to (other?)
tracks on the 1851 and 1866 maps, so this does not provide a clear
discrimination. One other aspect of the house shown in the picture
is consistent with information that the Five Mile Tavern had two
chimneys, one at each end (the
City Board in 1787 granted money to build/rebuild these), but
no information exists about the nature of the other farmhouse, which
could well have been similar. So it remains possible from the
evidence in the picture that it does show the Five Mile Tavern, but
not with certainty.
The USGS topographic map Albany 15 minute quadrangle of 1893
(surveyed 1891) probably shows
a mark indicating a house approximately in this same position,
although the scale of the map does not allow great precision for the
location. This map does not show anything at the nearby site of
William Knowles farm and house, purchased by the Club in 1894-5, nor
any house at the location farther west of the LaGrange farmhouse,
both of which certainly existed at the time of the map survey, so
confidence in the information is not high.
A newspaper
report of November 1914 refers to the old "King's Tavern"
having been saved from burning down; this is likely the former Five
Mile Tavern as it is described in the article as located "on the old
King's highway", and as the property of the Country Club (they
purchased the lot containing the Tavern site in 1913). However, it
appears to have burned down in March the next year, assuming that
the one
line report in the Altamont Enterprise refers to this
building, and not to the other farmhouse.
Opinions offered by some local residents and Club employees in the
1938-40 interval to William Efner, and to William Mohr in 1953,
suggested that the Five Mile Tavern had been demolished before the
Country Club was founded or, alternatively, about 1900, or about
1915. We think the older evidence should be preferred, and that it
shows the Five Mile Tavern survived until 1915, and was destroyed by
fire, and that local lore of places and events 25 to 50 years
earlier had become muddled.
The other old farmhouse site near the 7th hole green
*William Efner received opinions from his interviews with local
residents in the 1938-40 interval that a man named Enos had occupied
the other more northerly farmhouse that ended up in the Country Club
property. Deeds for some property eventually purchased by the
Country Club and a 1903
court case for adverse possession featuring Henry Enos do
exist, but they concern a different lot (Great lot 5), located to
the northwest at some distance from that farmhouse. Henry Enos is
listed in the 1880 federal census as farming only 17 acres and with
a house of modest value. Perhaps he rented this northerly farmhouse
at some time, but the lot in which it is located (Great lot 4) was
owned by the Cooper family until sale to the Club in 1916.
Efner's 1940 notes
include a sketch map of this site, showing a "cellarway" (the
remains of the house foundation), and a nearby well, and a track
passing nearby, and the outline of the 7th hole green.
return/go to:
Former property of the Albany
Country Club in McKownville
Five Mile House
First
clubhouse
Albany Country
Club in McKownville
Country Club golf course and SUNYA
buildings
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