The Tivoli Nature Preserve, also Tivoli Park, in Albany is the largest urban nature preserve in the

Capital District A capital district, capital region or capital territory is normally a specially designated administrative division where a country's seat of government is located. As such, in a federal model of government, no state or territory has any politi ...

History

The land now comprising the Tivoli Preserve was originally owned by the Van Rensselaer family as part of the

patroonship In the United States, a patroon (; from Dutch ''patroon'' ) was a landholder with manorial rights to large tracts of land in the 17th century Dutch colony of New Netherland on the east coast of North America. Through the Charter of Freedoms ...

Rensselaerswyck The Manor of Rensselaerswyck, Manor Rensselaerswyck, Van Rensselaer Manor, or just simply Rensselaerswyck ( nl, Rensselaerswijck ), was the name of a colonial estate—specifically, a Dutch patroonship and later an English manor—owned by the ...

. In 1844 the Tivoli Hollow Railroad was built from Fuller Road to the

Albany Lumber District The lumber district of Albany, New York was relatively small in the 1830s with around six wholesale lumber merchants, but by the 1870s Albany was the largest lumber district in the United States by value, though by that time it had recently been ou ...

through the Tivoli Hollow and the northern end of the future park. In 1850 the city of Albany purchased the land in order to dam the Patroon Creek to form a reservoir for the public water system. In 1851 dams were constructed across Patroon Creek forming Upper and Lower Tivoli lakes, the upper lake was for storing and the lower for distribution. The lakes served the population of the city east of North Pearl Street. Plans to extend Manning Boulevard from its then current terminus at the intersection of Clinton Avenue and Central Avenue through the waterworks property were proposed in the 1870s and though grading and preliminary work proceeded, the street laid out was never a grand boulevard as proposed and the portion inside the park was never completed. Due to neglect after being abandoned as a water source around the turn of the 20th century, the park became the site of an informal dumping ground in the 1920s and the lake became heavily polluted to the point where it allegedly was red with pollution from nearby slaughterhouses. In 1957 the city turned the waterworks property into the Tivoli Lakes Nature Study Sanctuary, though by 1974 the area was in such neglect again that the

Albany Times Union The ''Times Union'' is an American daily newspaper, serving the Capital Region of New York. Although the newspaper focuses on Albany and its suburbs, it covers all parts of the four-county area, including the cities of Troy, Schenectady and Sa ...

published a faux obituary describing the park's "death". As part of a 1998 settlement closing the waste incinerator in the Sheridan Hollow neighborhood, the state funded a clean-up and upgrade of the preserve into an educational center in conjunction with the neighboring Philip Livingston Middle School. Proposed in 2002 the Patroon Path will be a wide path from the Corning Preserve at the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between Ne ...

west through the preserve along the Patroon Creek and

Interstate 90 Interstate 90 (I-90) is an east–west transcontinental freeway and the longest Interstate Highway in the United States at . It begins in Seattle, Washington, and travels through the Pacific Northwest, Mountain West, Great Plains, Midwest, a ...

(I-90) to Rensselaer Lake and the Pine Bush Preserve.

Activities

Fish in Tivoli Lake include bluegill,

large mouth bass The largemouth bass (''Micropterus salmoides'') is a carnivorous freshwater gamefish in the Centrarchidae ( sunfish) family, a species of black bass native to the eastern and central United States, southeastern Canada and northern Mexico, ...

, and

pumpkinseed The pumpkinseed (''Lepomis gibbosus''), also referred to as pond perch, common sunfish, punkie, sunfish, sunny, and kivver, is a small/medium-sized North American freshwater fish of the genus '' Lepomis'' (true sunfishes), from family Centrar ...

; birds in the preserve include woodpeckers, turkeys,

red-winged blackbird The red-winged blackbird (''Agelaius phoeniceus'') is a passerine bird of the family Icteridae found in most of North America and much of Central America. It breeds from Alaska and Newfoundland and Labrador, Newfoundland south to Florida, the Gu ...

s, and red tailed hawks. Mammals include squirrels, deer, and opossums. Nature walks and birdwatching is a popular activity in the preserve. Behind the Livingston Village Apartments is a 70 plot community garden within the Tivoli Preserve. It is Albany's largest community garden.

References

{{Albany, New York Parks in Albany, New York Urban public parks