1500 to 1700: the Mohican and the Skiwia Native Americans Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the
Mohican Indians had a number of settlements along the Hudson River near its confluence with the
Mohawk River. The land comprising the Poesten Kill and Wynants Kill areas—"kill" being the Dutch word for "creek" or small stream—were owned by two Mohican groups. The land around the Poesten Kill was owned by Skiwias and was called Panhooseck. The area around the Wynants Kill, known as Paanpack, was owned by Peyhaunet. The land between the creeks, which makes up most of today's
downtown and South Troy neighborhood along the Hudson River, was owned by Annape. South of the Wynants Kill and into present-day
Town of North Greenbush, the land was owned by Pachquolapiet. These parcels of land were sold to the
Dutch between 1630 and 1657, and each purchase was overseen and signed by Skiwias, the
sachem—the political leader of the Indigenous people—at the time. In total, more than 75 individual Mohicans were involved in deed signings in the 17th Century.
1700: The Dutch and the British The site of the city was a part of
Rensselaerswyck, a
patroonship created by Kiliaen van Rensselaer. Dirck Van der Heyden was one of the first settlers. In 1707, he purchased a farm of , which in 1787 was laid out as a village.
The 1800s: Canals, shipping, early industrialization The name Troy, after the legendary Greek city of
Troy made famous in
Homer's
Iliad, was adopted in 1789, before which the tiny community had been known as Ashley's Ferry. The area was formed into the Town of Troy in 1791 from part of the
Manor of Rensselaerswyck. The township included today's towns of
Brunswick and
Grafton. Troy became a village in 1801 then was chartered as a city in 1816. In the post–Revolutionary War years, as Central New York was first settled, a strong trend to classical names existed, and Troy's naming fits the same pattern as the New York cities of Syracuse, Rome, Utica, Ithaca, and the towns of Sempronius and Manlius, and dozens of other similarly named towns to the west of Troy. Troy's Latin motto is
Ilium fuit, Troja est, which means "Ilium was, Troy is". Northern and Western New York was a theater of the
War of 1812, and militia and regular army forces were led by
Stephen Van Rensselaer of Troy. Quartermaster supplies were shipped through Troy. A local butcher and meatpacker named
Samuel Wilson supplied the military, and according to local lore, stamped the meat barrels "U.S." which alternately was interpreted as "United States" and "
Uncle Sam," meaning Wilson. Troy has since claimed to be the historical home of Uncle Sam, who is buried in the historic Oakwood Cemetery located on the northern outskirts of the city and the burial site of numerous local luminaries. The iconic Uncle Sam caricature was created by political newspaper cartoonist
Thomas Nast. On December 23, 1823,
The Troy Sentinel newspaper was the first publisher of the world-famous Christmas poem "
A Visit from St. Nicholas" (also known as "The Night Before Christmas" or Twas the Night Before Christmas"). The poem was published anonymously. Its author has long been believed to have been
Clement Clarke Moore, but now is regarded by some as having been
Henry Livingston Jr. Scientific and technical proficiency was supported by the presence of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), one of the highest-ranked engineering schools in the country. RPI originally was sponsored by
Stephen Van Rensselaer, one of the most prominent members of that family of Dutch colonial origins. RPI was founded in 1824, and eventually absorbed the campus of the short-lived liberal arts-based
Troy University, which closed in 1862 during the Civil War. Rensselaer founded RPI for the "application of science to the common purposes of life," and it is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world. The institute is known for its success in the transfer of technology from the laboratory to the marketplace.
Financial success and flaming destruction Through much of the 19th and into the early 20th centuries, Troy was one of the most prosperous cities in the United States. Prior to its rise as an industrial center, it was the transshipment point for meat and vegetables from Vermont and New York, which were sent by the Hudson River to New York City. The trade was vastly increased after the construction of the
Erie Canal, with its eastern terminus directly across the Hudson River from Troy at
Cohoes in 1825. Another artery constructed was the Champlain Canal. In 1916, Troy Federal Lock opened as one of the first modern locks along the present-day canal system. Troy has nearly been destroyed by fire three times. What was known as the
Great Troy Fire of 1862 burned down the W. & L. E. Gurley Company factory, which later that year was replaced by the new
W. & L. E. Gurley Building, now a
National Historic Landmark: Gurley & Sons remains a worldwide leader in precision instrumentation to this day. Troy's one-time great wealth was produced in the steel industry, with the first American
Bessemer converter erected on the Wynantskill Creek, a stream with falls in a small valley at the south end of the city. The industry first used charcoal and iron ore from the nearby Adirondack Mountains. Later, ore and coal from the Midwest were shipped via the
Erie Canal to Troy and were processed before being sent down the Hudson River to New York City. The iron and steel also were used by the extensive federal arsenal located—as it is today—across the Hudson at
Watervliet, a community then called West Troy. After the
Civil War, the steel production industry moved west to be closer to raw materials. The presence of iron and steel also made it possible for Troy to be an early site in the development of iron storefronts and steel structural supports in architecture, and some significant early examples remain in the city.
Pioneering in the world of sports Troy was an early home of professional baseball and was the host of two major league teams. The first team to call Troy home was the
Troy Haymakers, a
National Association team operating in 1871–72. One of its major players was
Williams H. Craver, a Civil War veteran who was a noted catcher and also managed the team. Its last manager was
Jimmy Wood, recognized as the first Canadian to play professional baseball. The Troy Haymakers team folded, and the city subsequently had no team for seven seasons. Then, from 1879 to 1882, Troy rebounded as home to the
National League's
Troy Trojans. They not only were competitive in the league, they fielded a young
Dan Brouthers who went on to become baseball's first great slugger. Today's sports scene is quite different. The Tri-City ValleyCats, a minor league professional baseball team, calls the Joseph L. Bruno Stadium at Hudson Valley Community College home. The RPI Engineers are an NCAA Division III sports participant except in ice hockey where it plays at the Division I level and won various championships including the national title in 1954 and 1985. The Hudson Valley CC Vikings participate in Region III of the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) and in the Mountain Valley Athletic Conference. Russell Sage College's Gators compete at the NCAA Division III level in numerous sports and in, among various conferences, the Empire 8 Conference.
Politics, commerce and growth abound In 1892, poll watcher Robert Ross was shot dead and his brother was wounded by operatives of Mayor Edward Murphy, later a U.S. senator, after uncovering a man committing voter fraud. The convicted murderer, Bartholomew "Bat" Shea, was executed in 1896, although another man, John McGough, later admitted he had been the shooter. The initial emphasis on heavier industry later spawned a wide variety of highly engineered mechanical and scientific equipment. Troy was the home of
W. & L. E. Gurley, Co., makers of precision instruments. Gurley's
theodolites were used to survey much of the American West after the Civil War and were highly regarded until laser and digital technology eclipsed the telescope and compass technology in the 1970s. Bells manufactured by Troy's
Meneely Bell Company ring all over the world. Troy also was home to a manufacturer of racing shells that used impregnated paper in a process that presaged the later use of fiberglass, Kevlar, and carbon-fiber composites. In 1900, Troy annexed
Lansingburgh, a former town and village whose standing dates back prior to the War of Independence, in Rensselaer County. Lansingburgh is thus often referred to as "North Troy." However, prior to the annexation that portion of Troy north of Division Street was called North Troy and the neighborhood south of Washington Park was referred to as South Troy. To avoid confusion with streets in Troy following the annexation, Lansingburgh's numbered streets were renamed: its 1st Street, 2nd Street, 3rd Street, etc., became North Troy's 101st Street, 102nd Street, 103rd Street, etc. Lansingburgh was home to the
Lansingburgh Academy. In the early 1900s, the
New York Central Railroad was formed from earlier railroads and established its "Water Level Route" from New York City to Chicago, via Albany. A
Beaux-Arts station was constructed . A short New York Central branch from Rensselaer connected at Troy. Also serving the station was the
Boston and Maine Railroad to/from Boston and the
Delaware and Hudson Railroad to/from Canada. The railroads quickly made obsolete the 1800s-constructed canals along the Mohawk. The former NYC operates today as
CSX for freight service and
Amtrak for passenger service, the latter operating from
Albany–Rensselaer station, directly opposite downtown Albany on the east side of the Hudson River. The end of rail passenger service to Troy occurred when the Boston and Maine dropped its Boston–Troy run in January 1958. The Troy Union Station was demolished in 1958. In addition to the strong presence of the early American steel industry, Troy also was a manufacturing center for shirts, shirtwaists, detachable collars and cuffs. In 1825, local resident Hannah Lord Montague was tired of cleaning her blacksmith-husband's shirts. She cut off the collars of his shirts since only the collar was soiled, bound the edges and attached strings to hold the
false collars in place. This also allowed the collars and cuffs to be starched separately. Montague's idea caught on and changed the fashion for American men's dress for a century. Her patented collars and cuffs first were manufactured by Maullin & Blanchard, which eventually was absorbed by
Cluett, Peabody & Company. Cluett's
Arrow brand shirts still are worn by men across the country. The large labor force required by the shirt manufacturing industry also produced in 1864 the nation's first female
labor union, the
Collar Laundry Union, founded in Troy by
Kate Mullany. On February 23, 1864, 300 members of the union went on strike. After six days, the laundry owners gave in to their demands and raised wages 25%. Further developments arose in the industry when, in 1933, Sanford Cluett invented a process he called
Sanforization, a process that shrinks
cotton fabrics thoroughly and permanently. Cluett, Peabody's last main plant in Troy, was closed in the 1980s, but the industrial output of the plant had long been transferred to facilities in the South. In 1906, the city supplied itself with water from a 33-inch riveted-steel main from the
Tomhannock Reservoir. A 30-inch cast-iron main was added in 1914. In 2023, the city completed the first phase of installation of two 36-inch pipes totaling approximately 8 miles between the reservoir and the city's Water Treatment Plant as part of a multi-year project to fully replace the existing century-old transmission line. The project began in 2021. When the iron and steel industry moved westward to Pennsylvania around Pittsburgh to be closer to iron ore from Lake Erie and nearby coal and coke needed for the Bessemer process, and with a similar downturn in the collar industry, Troy's prosperity began to fade. After the passage of
Prohibition, and given the strict control of
Albany by the O'Connell political machine, Troy became a way station for an
illegal alcohol trade from Canada to New York City. Likewise, the stricter control of morality laws in the neighboring
New England states encouraged the development of openly operating speakeasies and brothels in Troy. Gangsters such as "
Legs Diamond" conducted their business in Troy, giving the city a somewhat colorful reputation through World War II. A few of the buildings from that era have since been converted into restaurants, such as the former Old Daly Inn.
Kurt Vonnegut lived in Troy and the area, and many of his novels include mentions of "Ilium" (an alternate name for Troy) or surrounding locations. Vonnegut wrote
Player Piano in 1952, based on his experiences working as a
public relations writer at nearby
General Electric. His 1963 novel, ''
Cat's Cradle'', was written in the city and is set in Ilium. His recurring main character, Kilgore Trout, is a resident of
Cohoes, just across the Hudson River from Troy.
2000 to today Like many old industrial cities, Troy has had to deal with the loss of its manufacturing base, loss of population and wealth to the suburbs, and to other parts of the country. This led to dilapidation and disinvestment until later efforts were made to preserve Troy's architectural and cultural past. , Troy is updating its citywide comprehensive plan for the first time in more than 50 years. The two-year process is known as "Realize Troy" and was initiated by the Troy Redevelopment Foundation (with members from the Emma Willard School, RPI,
Russell Sage College, and St. Peter's Health Partners). Urban Strategies Inc. (Toronto) is planning Troy's redevelopment. ==Geography==