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Downtown Schenectady is the central business district for the city of Schenectady, New York. It originated in the 1820s with the moving of the commercial and industrial interests east from the original 17th and 18th century settlement, spurred on by the development of the Erie Canal. Home to the headquarters and major manufacturing plants of two large corporations, General Electric and American Locomotive Company, Downtown Schenectady catered to tens of thousands of workers in its heyday. Typical of the post-industrial Northeastern United States and Upstate New York in particular, Downtown Schenectady saw a decline in manufacturing and population starting in the 1970s. Recent construction and renovation has caused the downtown area to become an entertainment mecca for New York's Capital District anchored by Proctor's Theatre. ==History== The area of Downtown Schenectady was built shortly after a fire in 1819 destroyed 169 buildings in what is now the Stockade neighborhood. The Stockade neighborhood was the original extent of settlement in Schenectady from the 17th century, and settlement had barely begun on the north side of State Street. Shortly after the fire however the Erie Canal was being built a few hundred yards east of the city and therefore the commercial interests of Schenectady began to move east to what is now Downtown Schenectady, this left the Stockade to develop as a residential community separate from the business district. Downtown Schenectady includes Union College, which is a private 4-year college established in 1795. In July 1806, the college determined to acquire a large tract of land to the east of the main settlement in Schenectady, on a gentle slope up from the Mohawk River and facing nearly due west. This tract was not promisingly described by college president Eliphalet Nott some years later as “pasture grounds, scarred by deep ravines, rendered at once unsightly and difficult of access by an alternation of swamp and sand hill…”. Due to the fact that the Erie Canal from Schenectady to Albany was long compared to by land an alternative to the canal was proposed by George Featherstonhaugh. With the support of the Patroon of Rensselaerswyck Stephen van Rensselaer the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad was built. Opened for service in 1831 this was the first steam passenger locomotive running regularly scheduled service in the United States. The present railroad right-of-way from Hamburg Street to the present-day Amtrak station opened in 1843.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 url = http://members.localnet.com/~docsteve/railroad/local.htm#mohawkhudson )〕 Thomas Edison moved his Edison Machine Works to Schenectady in 1887, and in 1892 it became the headquarters of the General Electric Company (GE). The location chosen was at the western end of Erie Boulevard at the edge of Downtown. The GE Plant along with American Locomotive Company's (ALCO) plant (1848–1970) and headquarters (1901–1970) at the east end of downtown along the Mohawk River gave fuel to downtown's commercial activities as thousands of workers at the two plants would patronize the establishments along State Street and Erie Boulevard. ALCO was a pioneer in many different industrial fields, beginning with steam locomotion and progressing through electric and diesel-electric. From ALCO's plant several historic products came from Downtown Schenectady including the first diesel-electric locomotive in 1924 (also- 1929 first of that type for passenger use), the largest locomotive at the time in the world in 1941, M-36 tanks and all 3,314 M-7s built, 1,000 of which were present at El Alamein during World War II, and boilers and turret rollers for the US Navy, including those on the USS ''Missouri''. In the late 1940s roughly 80% of all diesel-electric locomotives in service in the US were built at ALCO's Schenectady plant. It was thanks to these industries at opposite edges of Downtown that Schenectady earned the nickname ''"The City that Lights and Hauls the World"''.〔 In the late 1970s, in an effort to boost Downtown and upgrade the city's western entrance, Federal and state Urban Cultural Park grants were used on Mill Street, a small brick-paved street between State and Church streets. Two restaurants opened with great success but later folded during Downtown's continued decline. The project was a failure and was home to abandoned concrete kiosks, planters, and benches all disgraced by graffiti as of 2006. Another failed attempt at urban renewal was the $11 million Canal Square shopping plaza next to Proctor's Theatre in the 1980s. This was praised by then-President of the United States Ronald Reagan as an example of the good that could be done by the smart use of urban renewal money. The shopping plaza, however, failed due to suburban competition. Another proposal that never got off the ground was to level Proctor's for a shopping mall. In the 1980s, thousands of GE jobs were downsized in Schenectady, and when GE moved the headquarters for its Power Systems division with the hundreds of high paying white-collar jobs with it to Atlanta, Georgia, Schenectady County took action with the creation of the Metroplex Development Authority. Originally envisioned as a way to fund a convention center, it developed into a mechanism for funding private projects through grants and low-interest loans.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Downtown Schenectady」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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