Presented by Kathy Sheehan, executive director of the Hart Cluett Museum
This program will look at the system of redlining in Troy that kept persons of color and new immigrant groups from living in certain neighborhoods in the city. Forced to live in the neighborhoods close to the industrial core of the city, the residents nevertheless created a thriving community with businesses, schools and churches from the 1920’s till the 1960’s, only to once again be displaced by urban renewal and the building of the Collar City Bridge.
Kathy Sheehan is best known as historian for the City of Troy and for Rensselaer County in addition to her work with the staff of HBO’s “The Gilded Age” to find authentic 19th-century sites and buildings to film for the television series. Her interest in history led her to major in public history at the University at Albany and to work at the museum 36 years ago as a curatorial assistant. Eventually Kathy became the city and county historian and the museum’s educator.
