42°43'14.79"N / 73°40'42.16"W
Photographers have been making images from this spot since the 1800s, when early practitioners carried heavy cameras and fragile glass plates into the gorge to fix the falls in long, deliberate exposures. Some of the region’s earliest landscape photographs were made right here, recording the same stream and dramatic movement that continues to shape the descent today.
To honor that lineage, this photograph was created through century-old optics, using glass crafted in the era when those first images were made.
Long before photography reached the Capital District, the Poestenkill powered the early industrial rise of Troy. The falls drop into a narrow gorge cut through the Rensselaer Plateau, and that dependable fall line made this one of the city’s earliest and most productive mill sites. By the early 1800s, water from the Poestenkill was being diverted through races and flumes to drive textile mills, tanneries, iron works, and small machine shops along its banks. This industrial corridor shaped Troy’s growth and helped cement its reputation for iron, stoves, bells, and later shirt manufacturing.
The falls remained a landmark even as the surroundings industrialized. Nineteenth-century photographs show mill buildings perched close to the gorge and footbridges spanning the water, evidence of how closely the natural drop and the built environment once intertwined. As industry shifted and many of those structures disappeared, the falls retained their basic form, shaped far more by geology than by the machinery that once worked at its edges.
What survives today is the same stepped cascade that drew early photographers, mill workers, surveyors, and naturalists. The river has carried on through changing eras of industry, decline, and restoration, leaving the falls as one of the most steady and familiar features in Troy’s evolving landscape.
© 2025 John Bulmer Photography, John Bulmer Media, Nor'easter Films, and Restoration Obscura
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