Saint Joseph's Church and The Empire State Plaza

Saint Joseph's Church

       In our way to the Empire State Plaza we stopped at the Saint Joseph's Church. This magnificent building is located in Albany and it has been unused for almost 20 years. It is very aspiring that the community had decided to keep this building even though many people want to demolish it and construct a modern one. We all were amused by the tremendous architecture that this old church has. The Saint Joseph’s church brings definitely historical mementos to this small community of Albany.

Arrive at NYSM/ visitor Pass

 Once we were at the empire state plaza, we all received visitor passes because we were going to go to places of the museum where regular people would not go.  With our passes all hanging from our shirts, we went to Andrea Lain who is the archaeology collections’ manager.

 Lain talked to us about the lives of the poorest people in New York in the early 19^th century. She explained that most of the poorest people lived in the country area. Since those poor people lived in small towns, they were helped by others in the community. However, when people started traveling, it was more difficult now to take care of the poor.  The almshouse was a place where people who had nowhere to go were given housing. “40% of the residents between 1904 and 1918 were born in foreign countries.” This is a fascinating fact because it shows that many people in the society were focused on helping others without caring about their backgrounds or their nationalities.

 When of the residents at the house died, they were buried at the Almshouse cemetery. This  cemetery was where poor people were buried after they have died from diseases, injuries or hardship. It was located on New Scotland  Avenue in Albany, New York right next to the Sage Colleges. In February of 2002, excavations began and 830 coffins were found. Many of the coffins were stacked upon each other. In addition, the coffins in where each person was buried say a lot about what they did for a living. In addition, the clothes that they had when buried also says about their lives and the time period.

Caucasian man

Samples of people buried at the Almshouse

 Lain showed us samples of the different people that were found in the cemetery. For instance, the picture above shows one of the person who was buried at the cemetery and could probably be a Caucasian man. The archeologists are not 100% sure that he could be a Caucasian man, but because his skull shows some specific characteristics as well as his DNA, they suppose he is Caucasian. In addition, in many occasions by examining the condition of the skulls, archeologists along with other discipline are able to recognize some diseases or injuries that these poor people were suffering from.  

Lisa Anderson, the curator of bio archaeology, also explained that by examining the bones, we could identify the diseases and almost tell how the lives of poor people were like. For instance, many of the bones of African people grew extra compact bone at the ends. This was due to the hard work they made which put extra workload in their joints. This then led their joints to weaken which caused their bodies to response by making more compact bone. In addition, the crust of their bones looked more elevated than usual which also shows the hard work that African people did.    

 Having taken physiology and anatomy, I could recognize many of the abnormalities that the skulls and other bones of the dead people had. Being Physiology and anatomy one of my favorite classes, I enjoyed a lot the talks about humans’ body structure and their abnormalities. I feel that all the entire time we were standing was very worth it.