Preservation League honors Conkling House

— Photo from John Eldridge

Timeless beauty restored: The dining room of the Daniel Conkling House features a restored marble fireplace and original windows.

RENSSELAERVILLE — The Preservation League of New York State has given the Daniel Conkling House in Rensselaerville an award for Excellence in Historic Preservation.

The league's statewide awards program honors notable achievements in retaining, promoting, and reusing New York State's irreplaceable architectural heritage.

“This project has restored a relic of Albany County's colonial past from a neglected shadow of its former self to its former glory,” said Jay DiLorenzo, president of the Preservation League, in a release submitted by Janet Haseley, research chairwoman of the Rensselaerville Historical Society

“The center-hall Georgian residence, built in 1806, was owned and maintained by descendants of its original owners for some 150 years, but was abandoned in the 1980s and fell victim to decay and vandals. Thanks to the leadership of the Open Space Institute and a sympathetic owner with a vision for preservation, not only has the building been restored, but a conservation easement is now in place to protect a 333-acre landscape of farmstead, crop and pasture lands, forests and wetlands.”

The restoration project was featured in the Enterprise Spring Home & Garden section April 24, 2014, online at AltamontEnterprise.com.

“Because it’s architecturally very, very beautiful,” Stewart Myers told The Enterprise of the reason for undertaking the massive project. “And it has family connections going back 200 years.”

The project team included property owners Stewart Myers, the late Maureen Myers and Roy and JoAnn Myers; Warren Builders LLC, contractor; Robert W. Adams, architect; Olsen Associates, architects, and the Open Space Institute.

In addition to the Myers families, several people from Rensselaerville went to the ceremony in New York City on Wednesday, May 13, according to Haseley, including two other descendants of Daniel Conkling, Roswell Eldridge and John Niles Eldridge whose grandmother lived in the house when Roswell and John were children in the mid 1900s.

Also at the ceremony, held at the historic New York Yacht Club, were Ken Storms, president of the Rensselaerville Historical Society; Janet Nelson, one of the Rensselaerville Historical Society trustees who is also the Rensselaerville Town Historian; and Carol Ash, former New York State Commissioner of Parks, Recreation and Historic Places.

The hamlet of Rensselaerville, on the Helderberg escarpment, has over 60 historic structures built between 1787 and 1845. The Daniel Conkling House stands on a hill overlooking the hamlet.

The house’s original builder, Ephraim Russ, is known as the builder of all four churches in the Rensselaerville hamlet and several historic homes in the early 1800s.

The Myers family, who are descendants of Daniel Conkling, worked with the Open Space Institute Land Trust to acquire the property subject to a conservation easement. The property was recently added to the New York State Register of Historic Places and recommended for National Register listing.

"The Myers family understood the house's history, architectural quality and family connections," Stewart Myers said. "We did not comprehend what a grand and beautiful thing it would be once restored."

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