Guilderland
Historical
Society
- Guilderland properties listed in the
National Register of Historic Places - Norman Vale (Nott
House)
Norman Vale viewed from the south (August 2025).
The 2009 NRHP nomination document contains 18 photos of the Norman
Vale house; two are included below
click on an image to obtain full size view
1. Norman Vale house front viewed from
southeast
2. Norman Vale house front viewed from southwest
(photos taken by Anthony Opalka in
2009)
Text information extracts from NRHP nomination submitted in 2009
(note that much more extensive descriptive and historical
information is contained in the original NRHP document)
Norman Vale (Nott House) entered on the NRHP 11 December 2009
Norman Vale, also known as the Nott House, is set back from the
secluded Nott Road on a nearly ten acre parcel, giving it something
of its original rural setting.
Features: It is a three-part building with a tall
two-and-one-half-story center section flanked by one-and-one-half
wings which appear to be symmetrical from the front, but have a more
random appearance in the rear, reflecting interior floor plans. The
building is entered from either of two Colonial Revival doorways in
the side wings. The left entrance opens into a formal sitting room
that occupies the entire front portion of the wing. The right
entrance, which has what appears to be a very early “Dutch” door,
opens into mud room that provides access to the large kitchen, which
occupies the entire right wing.....The first floor of the center
block is occupied by a dining room. This was most likely the formal
parlor and on the side wall of the room is a finely-detailed Federal
mantel.....Windows in all rooms of these parts of the house appear
to have original glass in their twelve-over-twelve sash.....In the
main block, behind the dining room, is a library, the woodwork of
which was taken from a late nineteenth-century hotel in Saratoga
Springs, New York, that was scheduled for demolition. It bears no
relationship to either the Federal period or Colonial Revival period
woodwork in the rest of the house. It was likely installed in the
mid-twentieth century....The second floor of all three parts of the
house consists of a series of suites, each of which has private
bedrooms and adjacent baths.....Most of the woodwork appears to date
from the 1930s, although there is a simple Federal mantel and large
wood closet that may be from the construction period of the
house......In the enclosed porch off the rear of the second floor,
it is possible to see the original exterior covering of the house:
wide exposure beaded clapboards......The second floor of the eastern
wing contains woodwork that dates from the earliest period of the
house, such as doors that have flat and beaded panels on one side
and recessed panels on the other......
The Nott House is clearly one that has evolved over its two-hundred
year history, but those who made changes left few clues as to how
the house may have originally functioned.
Date of initial construction: ca. 1790
Historical and Architectural importance: The house known as
Norman Vale or the Nott House, is significant....as an early Federal
period house that was altered and enlarged throughout its history,
with the most recent changes reflecting the Colonial Revival taste
of the first half of the twentieth century.....
The house was constructed in the late-eighteenth-century in the
formerly rural town of Guilderland, outside Albany, New York, and
was the home of several locally prominent individuals and their
families from the time it was constructed around 1790 until 1977,
when it was sold out of the Nott family for the first time in
approximately 150 years. Its more than 200-year history reflects
changing fortunes and architectural tastes that swept the
northeastern United States from the time of the American Revolution,
and personages prominent in the greater Albany area once called
Norman Vale home.....
The construction date is believed to be around 1790, when it was
likely owned by John Taylor.... he may have constructed this house
as a country seat and maintained a townhouse in Albany, about seven
miles away, given his long-time involvement in New York State
politics in the early years of the nineteenth century....
Although Taylor and his wife had no children, they adopted the
infant daughter Margaret, of Taylor's wife's sister. Margaret later
married a prominent Albany physician, Charles DeKay Cooper, and the
young couple became the heirs to Norman Vale. One of their children
married Joel Benedict Nott, son of Eliphalet Nott, the renowned
scholar who was president of Union College in nearby Schenectady
from 1804 until his death in 1866. Joel Nott, who graduated from
Union College in 1817, taught there for a time and later retired to
devote his time to scientific agricultural pursuits at Norman
Vale.....
Norman Vale
(Nott House) NRHP nomination document (33MB pdf)
map location for Norman Vale (Nott House)
tax map showing property boundary
Google Earth kml
file
Guilderland NRHP properties
Guilderland Historian
Guilderland Historical Society