Browse Exhibits (3 total)
Evolution of Beekman Street
History of Beekman Street, Evolution, Artists Identity/roles, the future
Stories of Beekman street community members who tell us of how Beekman exists today in a 21st century context as an ever-shifting piece of Saratoga Springs. This exhibit explores the artists and other members interaction and relationship with the Arts District since its inception to the 2008 recession to today in 2016. This includes the challenges that artists working on Beekman street are facing today, as well as other communities, including the untold narratives of some who may be excluded in Saratoga Springs. Specifically, one of the interviewees during this project gave insights to the intentional exclusion by the greater Saratoga community of the Black Elk’s Lodge as an openly proud, pro-Black organization. Funding for this lodge has continued to decline because of discrimination, and combined with the economic decline of the country at the end of the 2000’s, many of the lodge’s core functions have deteriorated.
The Golden Age Club and Senior Center of Saratoga, 1955-2016
In November 2015, the Adult and Senior Center of Saratoga celebrated its 60th anniversary. How the Center started, who has been involved in it and what it takes to make it work are all revealed in images, articles, minutes and other documents saved over the years.
From 2014-2016, Skidmore College's MDOCS program turned these documents into an archive, finding stories collected as Sixty Years Young in a video and brochure presented at the Gala celebrating the anniversary and in an exhibition presented at the gala in 2015, at Skidmore and at the Center in 2017.
Saratoga Springs in 250 Years of Maps
On April 17, 1915 the Village and Town of Saratoga Springs were incorporated as the City of Saratoga Springs. To mark the city's centennial, this exhibit tells the rich story of Saratoga Springs through its maps and plans.
The exhibition explores cartography in Saratoga Springs by following some of the ideas they convey. First, maps reveal the extent of Saratoga Springs, revealing the territory and administrative districts that formed the town, village and later city of Saratoga Springs since 1819. Additional themes include:
- The community's changing interests and fortunes come to life in a map-based history that chronicles 250 years in 16 maps.
- Map stories also bring into focus what visitors and residents care about. Civic life activities from schools and voting to parades and recreation make it onto the map. Transportation and tourism come alive as routes and attractions starting with the area’s emergence as a small settlement based around mineral springs in the late eighteenth century. The best laid plans come alive on urban development maps, even if they not every one gets implemented.
- The exhibit zooms in on several map stories:
- Three versions of an 1810 map of the Putnam family property reveal how that initial land grant mattered to later generations.
- Plans for railroad and automobile roads show how transportation reshaped (or not) the space and activities in the city.
- Saratoga Springs' mapmakers are also revealed. Real estate agent Lester Brothers, surveyors and civil engineers Jesse S. and Samuel J. Mott, and Temple Grove Seminary professor and president Charles F. Dowd are among the area's mapmakers.
- A slideshow that shows several exhibition maps georeferenced on today's cityscape.
- Browse over 100 maps from local and national collections. (If you choose to use these maps in your own work, please acknowledge the original archive or library, and site this project!)
Today, Saratogians use historical maps to build our own maps drawing geographical data and other information (such as building location and changing public space) to understand how the Spa City has grown and changed over time.
For a brief overview of the exhibition, please see our brochure and tri-fold. An online photo gallery offers a virtual visit showcasing the exhibit as it hangs in the Saratoga Springs History Museum.
This exhibit opened at the
on April 14, 2015 and remained open until December 2015. This exhibit is supported by the Alfred Z. Solomon Trust and JIMAPCO.