13S 



Proposed Erection of 



because the one structure is, in its architecture, a reality before our 

 eyes of a long gone-away history, and the other is history, and of the 

 highest class. If any word tho Institute can utter, or effort it can 

 make, can avail toward their preservation, the future will be grateful ; 

 for while any architecture can be produced — it is but the will of a 

 nation to be expressed and St. Peter's can be placed on Broadway in 

 faithful copy — all that is of that which can be effected by money — 

 yet history cannot be bought. The work of time and association, only 

 time and the ages can perform. One of these buildings is the Pem- 

 berton house, on the north-east corner of Columbia and IS'orth Pearl 

 streets, of tlie date of Queen Anne's reign, w^hilo Marlborough was the 

 invincible soldier, Avhile Addison wrote for all time to imitate, while 

 as yet the old race had not been supplanted by the House of Hanover, 

 and the people of Albany knew no other sovereignty than the royal 

 lady whom Dr. Johnson dimly remembered as in velvet; but inter- 

 esting as that is, there is yet an association with its date, 1710, to us 

 invaluable. Its construction must have been an object of interest to 

 men who themselves had known those identified with the very first 

 settlers of the trading post directly succeeding Hudson's discovery in 

 the Half ^loon. These old people would in the probabilities see with 

 a kindly look another building, and over the work of the laborers 

 thereon, while they talked about what Queen Anne and Marlborough 

 were doing, recollect when the procedure in Holland was their home 

 government. The architecture of the building is to-day in some fea- 

 tures what it then was. The double door, Avith its smaller opening for 

 observation, reminds us of what may now be seen in the town hall of 

 Leyden, whose siege is of the vivid passages in Holland's history. It 

 would be familiar to a citizen of the Low Countries. One only has to 

 look down the street of Antwerp and he can to-day see what was 

 ancient Xew York and Albany. Our bright architects can plan for us 

 the semblance of old houses, but time charges a price which even 

 Americans of the Pacific coast cannot pay. 



Your committee have pleasure here in expressing to the Institute 

 their grateful sense of Mr. Pemberton's intelligent appreciation of this 

 property, and while he holds it they have no recommendation to make; 

 but he, as all of us, will pass away, in the certainties of chronology. 

 We would earnestly appeal, through the Institute, to the city to pur- 

 chase that house and to keej) it so long as the physical structure 

 remains, as the history of what Albany was in the ancient life of its 

 progress. Certainly they would not advise any extravagant municipal 

 expenditure, but this is not a dangerous precedent. It can have but 



