BROADALBIN — It’s as old as Popsicles. It’s as old as the Winter Olympics. It’s six years older than the Great Sacandaga Lake.
The village of Broadalbin is turning 100 in 2024. Expect a party.
In the pipeline is a time capsule opening on Memorial Day and a potential block party likely set for September or October to commemorate the centennial.
“That way, it’s still nice,” village clerk Barbara Rote said. “Most of the summer traffic has gone home and it’s more just for the residents.”
The details are still being discussed by the village government, in coordination with Broadalbin Memorial VFW Post 8690, American Legion Post 337 and the Broadalbin Kennyetto Historical Society.
A sign for the village of Broadalbin on March 17, 2024.
Among pending decisions, organizers still haven’t decided whether to open the time capsule before or after the Memorial Day parade.
“I recommend they do it after the parade celebration,” said VFW Post Commander David Becker. “I mean, if you're doing it at eight o'clock in the morning, nobody is going to be there. [Later], you have everything else going on.”
The memento chest sits at the corner of north and west Main Street below the Soldiers Monument, which is one year older than the village itself. In 1973, crews found a few 50-year-old items soaked with water after exhuming the capsule.
Rote isn’t certain if any of the current items have been damaged as well.
“We're not actually sure what's going to be in there,” she said. “We don't know there's some stuff and we do know other stuff maybe got ruined.”
Village officials, at one time, considered opening the time capsule again 75 or 100 years after it was opened in 1973 but decided against it, assuming that nobody from that era would be alive to see it, according to Rote.
Main Street in the village of Broadalbin on March 17, 2024.
A new village?
On Aug. 6, 1924 between 1 and 8 p.m., voters in the town of Broadalbin chose to flip the hamlet of Broadalbin into a village. The final count of the special election is uncertain.
While the town (named after the Breadalbane region of Scotland) was one of the first municipalities created in now-Fulton County, the village was the last of its kind to carry legal authority in Fulton County.
The first incorporated village was Northville in 1873. Then came Dolgeville in 1891 and Mayfield in 1896.
Main Street in the village of Broadalbin on March 17, 2024.
Regardless, the once-hamlet was referred to as a village long before incorporation. For decades, it was known to be the town's center of industry and tourism, drawing in tourists from beyond the Sacandaga Valley.
“There were three hotels in Broadalbin and we’re the only one standing,” said Dave Thompson, co-owner of the Historic Hotel Broadalbin on West Main Street.
In 1854, the building opened as a glove-making shop. It wasn’t until 1881 that the site was turned into the Kennyetto Hotel, named after a river running through the valley.
Village Hall on Main Street in Broadalbin on Saturday, March 16, 2024.
The hotel is one of a few remaining structures on the main strip from the pre-Civil War era. Between 1877 and 1905, more than a dozen businesses and several churches were lost in a series of devastating fires.
Thompson said that Hotel Broadalbin might do something to commemorate the village’s 100-year anniversary. He didn’t hear about the centennial until a woman posted about it on Facebook recently.