Most children grow up knowing their house is different because it’s bigger, smaller or older than their friends’ homes. Growing up in the Van Schaick Mansion in Cohoes, however, meant living inside a piece of American history, from its role in the Revolutionary War to the family that preserved the landmark for more than half a century.
While her classmates learned about the Revolutionary War from textbooks, Carol Durant grew up inside it. The stone-sided Dutch colonial mansion, built in the 1730s by the influential Van Schaick family of brewers and landowners, played a pivotal role in the American Revolution and welcomed visitors including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Benedict Arnold and Philip Schuyler.
“When you think of all the significance of that home, it’s amazing,” Durant reminisces. “I remember when I was in grade school, it was such a big deal to live in a house like that. It was my father’s pride and joy.”
When her father, Charles Canestrari, who worked as a guard at the Watervliet Arsenal, purchased the Van Schaick Mansion in 1951, he wasn’t acquiring a museum piece. He was buying a home.
Over the next half-century, the home overlooking the Hudson River would become the center of Canestrari’s family life, where children grew up and one man devoted himself to preserving a property whose history stretched back nearly 300 years. His efforts helped secure its listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971…