Schenectady County Historical Society

The Schenectady County Historical Society, located in Schenectady, New York, was established on July 14, 1905, under the Membership Corporation Laws of the State of New York. The Society is an independent not-for-profit corporation, not a unit of government. Its stated mission as embodied in its constitution was, and remains, “to promote and encourage original historical research; to disseminate a greater knowledge of the history of the State of New York and particularly of Schenectady County; to gather, preserve, display, and make available for study artifacts, books, manuscripts, papers, photographs and other records and materials relating to the early and current history of Schenectady County, New York and of the surrounding area; to encourage the suitable marking of places of historic interest; to acquire by purchase, gifts, devise, or otherwise the title to or the custody and control of historic sites and structures.”

For seven years, the Society had no headquarters of its own, but was given space for exhibits in the Schenectady County Public Library. In December 1912, a committee responsible for finding a home for the Society succeeded in negotiating a three-year lease for the building at 11-13-15 Union Street that had been erected a half-century earlier to accommodate the offices of the County Clerk and the Surrogate Court and was no longer needed for that purpose. The exhibits were moved from the Library to the new home, and this became the location for monthly meetings for the next 46 years.

In April 1958, the General Electric Company deeded to the Society the former G.E. Women's Club building at 32 Washington Avenue “as tangible evidence of its interest and desire to associate itself with those who are working to advance the city's cultural and educational activities." The Georgian style building, whose grounds are adjacent to the waters of the Binnekill and the Mohawk River, displays aspects of Federal and Greek Revival throughout the house. It is located in the , declared a national historic site in 1973. The building had been erected in 1895 by Jones Mumford Jackson as a home for himself and his mother Dora, a widow, but both died within a few years of occupancy. An addition to the house was made in 1967, a meeting room named for local author John Vrooman. The Vrooman Room is also used periodically for museum exhibits.

To house an expanding collection of books and documents, a second major addition was added to the rear of the house in 1991. Called the Grems-Doolittle Library in honor of its major benefactor, Mandalay Grems, the Library and the Schenectady History Museum in the original house form the core of the Society’s downtown Schenectady operations.

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