Patroon Agent's House and Office

About this property

Patroon Agent's House and Office, also known as the Casparus Pruyn House and Office or Whish-Hull House and H. V. Rector office, is a historic home and office located on the Hudson River at Rensselaer in Rensselaer County, New York. It was built and first occupied Nov. 29, 1839 and consists of a 2+1⁄2-story rectangular brick residence with an attached 1-story rectangular brick office in the Greek Revival style. It was built by the Van Rensselaer family as a home and office for Casparus F. Pruyn, rent collection agent for William Van Rensselaer who had inherited the "East Manor" in 1839, consisting of Rensselaer County from his father Stephen. Today, the Patroon Agent would be considered the Chief Operating Officer of a corporation; also, several other Patroon Agent Houses have been located in and around Albany over the 200+ years of the patroonship. The properties face the Hudson River and are visible across the river from Interstate-787 on Albany's west bank. Located in what was originally settled as Bath, then later Bath-on-Hudson (incorporated into the City of Rensselaer in 1903), the property is situated at the riverfront southern boundary of Beverwyck, William Paterson van Rensselaer's estate situated facing the river on the ridge northeast of the Bath ferry landing. The house features an operating water-collection system for the many mineral springs that percolate in the area that was originally used for indoor plumbing; this system includes brick and cast-iron cisterns, channels with brick walls and ash-plank linings and an outflow now connected to the city storm-sewer system channeling the constant flow of 52 F water. In February 2013, a City contractor installing new sewer lines south on Forbes Avenue discovered a substantial underground water spring flow mid-street, between # 5 and 7 Forbes Avenue. After excavating 18 ft deep, a dewatering system of crushed stone and perforated drainage pipes was installed between Tracy and Central Avenues to divert this flow south to the city storm sewer system. This diversion—thought to be from an underground diagonal streamflow across the hillside between Forbes and Broadway—relieved virtually ALL groundwater inflow in all basements along Forbes Avenue, including drying up completely the springs and drainage system in the cellar of this subject structure. Years later, the spring water has returned to its channels, at a lower volume. The center-hall interior is formal with two large rooms deep on either side of the hall that features an oval, glass-paned oculus skylight at roof level atop the three-story galleried staircase with turned mahogany bannisters. This stairwell originally rose open from the cellar to the servants' quarters, now the attic, but was partitioned when the house was divided into north and south duplex units after the van Rensselaer family first sold it in 1865. Later, central heating replaced the use of 8 faux-grained black marble fireplaces and the two kitchen hearths in the cellar. The duplex layout consists of the north half containing the center hall, and the south using the side (Central Avenue) entrance and a perpendicular simple mahogany bannister servants' staircase to access the three floors and cellar.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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