ALTAMONT — To mark the 125th year of the incorporation of Altamont as a village, Marijo Dougherty, curator of the Village of Altamont Archives and Museums, highlights the history documented in stained glass windows.

Dougherty, in a statement of remembrance, wrote that churches served as meeting places and houses of worship, and were places where decisions were made for the benefit of community prosperity and survival. Churches, she wrote, produced “community leaders and citizens of note.”

The three churches of Altamont were built during the Gothic Revival movement; one of their features is their stained glass windows, and prominent people stepped forward to pay for their costs. It was a way, surmised Dougherty, for the donors to be remembered.

An exhibition featuring photographs of the stained glass windows will open on Oct. 18 in the Village Hall in conjunction with a party to celebrate the quasquicentennial. The pictures were taken by Ron Ginsberg.

Dougherty’s hope is that the exhibition will “encourage people to investigate further all the astonishing windows in our three churches, as well as the legacy of remembrance they represent for each donor.”

St. Lucy’s Catholic Church, renamed St. Lucy/St. Bernadette Church after two congregations combined, was established in 1888 by Lucie Rochefort Cassidy, a summer resident who had a chapel built on Grand Street so she could attend Sunday Mass.

The village, then called Knowersville, was quickly becoming a popular summer destination for residents of Albany, and it was Cassidy who suggested changing its name to Altamont, Latin for high mount.

In 1918, 16 years after Cassidy’s death, the chapel became a parish church and was named St. Lucy’s in her honor.

From 1922 to 1928, major renovations took place, which included the commission of painted and stained glass windows.

In 1787, St. James Evangelical Lutheran Church was built on a tract of land on the Van Rensselaer estate, situated between the Helderbergs and Guilderland Center; church records from that time show that there were 26 men and 32 women who worshipped there.

After the railroad was built in 1863, the village of Knowersville began to grow, and was populated by new homes and businesses. Members of the St. James Church began to worry that their church couldn’t meet the needs of a growing congregation.

In 1871, a resolution was passed that two churches would be built, including St. John’s in Knowersville.

The property for the church was donated by Conrad I. Crounse, and George Rockefeller was awarded the contract to build. The cornerstone was laid on July 11, 1871.

The Altamont Reformed Church started between 1700 and 1750 as a small log meeting house for a local Dutch Reformed Church along the Black Creek.

In 1788, a new church building was erected on the same site, formally called the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the Helderberg. It served the congregations of Guilderland, New Salem, and Feura Bush.

By 1834, the congregation had grown so much that another new church was erected at Osborn’s Corners.

The arrival of the railroad in 1863 spurred even further growth, and a new Altamont church building, the Second Reformed Church of the Helderberg, was dedicated in 1888. It shared services with the church at Osborn’s Corners.

Finally, the Altamont Reformed Church was formed as an independent body in 1896. The fellowship hall and Sunday school rooms were built in 1926, and extensive redecoration and improvements were made between 1950 and 1960.

The windows in the Altamont Reformed Church are abstract in design; the window in St. John’s, done in the Tiffany style, was donated in 1911 in memory of Charles Shoudy and his wife Sarah Crounse and depicts a nature scene; the selected windows in the St. Lucy/St. Bernadette Church are biblical.

The village’s 125th anniversary celebration will kick off on Oct. 18 with a public reception of a gallery of images of the windows in the village hall from 3 to 5 p.m.

An illustrated catalogue with color images of the windows and a brief history of the churches will be available for purchase.

The gallery will be open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Dec. 11.