The Time Capsule: What we found under Philip Schuyler

Popular Albany Institute of History and Art exhibit closed June 23

ALBANY – It was May 4, 1925 when then Albany philanthropist, George Hawley, signed a deed of gift note for F.E. Woollard, an Albany County notary staff employee. In the message Hawley wanted to make certain that the contents inside a bronze box would be given to the future Mayor or Chief Executive officer of the City of Albany, and they in turn, can give the box and contents to the city’s historical society for preservation and use.

The contents inside the box include 10 volumes of Munsell’s Annals of Albany, Hopkins’ Atlas of the City of Albany from 1876, photographs of both George Hawley and his wife, Theodora Millard Hawley, wedding rings and a bag of United States coins.

On May 8, 1925, the artifacts were buried underneath a circular foundation where a statue of Revolutionary War hero, Major General Philip Schuyler, was installed in front of Albany’s City Hall.

Hawley not only had the statue of Schuyler made to commemorate the memory of his wife Theodora, he also wanted future “inhabitants of the City of Albany” to view the contents that he hid underneath the statue inside the copper box, once the moment was right.

The box

98 years later, Albany County’s Department of General Services removed the Philip Schuyler statue from its resting space. To the DGS’ discovery, a bronze box was found. Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan, David Galin, Chief of Staff to Sheehan, Jonah Michael from Around Albany, and DGS staff were on the scene to capture the moment when the artifacts were found, the box was opened, and the contents were transferred to the Albany Institute of History and Art for further evaluation.

Included in the box along with the artifacts was a welcome note from George Hawley which began, “Greetings from the Albany of 1925 A.D. to the Albany of the future.”

Albany Institute of History and Art curator Diane Shewchuk, was responsible for culling through Hawley’s contents that are currently on view in the exhibition, The Time Capsule: What We Found Under Philip Schuyler. The exhibit opened Dec.4,  and was originally scheduled to end Feb.20.

With the next exhibition to open at the location where the Time Capsule exhibit currently stands for July 27,Shewchuk needed a month to uninstall the time capsule exhibit and install the upcoming exhibit, thus extending the Time Capsule’s exhibit viewing until Sunday, June 23.

Museum attendees will now have another chance to check  it out on Juneteenth, Wednesday, June 19, as part of the museum’s free entry day.

Originally, Shewchuk had other projects and exhibits scheduled for exhibiting for the fall of 2023. Little did she know at the time that she would have another surprise exhibit to come her way once the contents from the time capsule were found and transferred to the museum in mid-June 2023.

Shewchuk spent her summer and fall opening and reading each letter that was included in the box. She was the first curator to take the time to read everything that was dated back to the contents’ burial in May 1925. Once she read and sorted through the contents, she figured out which gallery rooms the exhibit was going to be displayed in prior to its Dec. 4 debut.

Shewchuk told TheSpot518 that she found it to be “quite moving to read the sentiments and wishes for the ‘Albany of the Future’, and to understand how much pride the citizens of 1925 had for their city.”

The Statue’s Origins

George Hawley became a philanthropist once he married his wife Theodora and teamed up with Theodora’s father, Theodore Amsdell, to co-own the Dobler Brewing Company which brewed beer in Albany. George and Theodora amassed their own fortune from being involved in the beer industry and through real estate investments. Although the Hawleys never had children, they resided comfortably in their seven-acre estate on 994 Madison Avenue.

George Hawley had a lot of love for his wife and according to George Hawley in his eight-page essay, “Memories of My Past”, he and Theodora “Lived for each other to see what happiness we could bring to each other.” When Theodora died in 1922, upon feeling grief for her, George decided to gather several of their personal belongings to bury inside the Philip Schuyler box, and have the statue erected.

According to Shewchuk, a group of prominent citizens wanted to erect a statue of Schuyler way before Hawley made it happen. At the time, the citizens didn’t have the funds to make it happen. In a Times Union article dating back to June 1, 1952, written at the time by C.R. Roseberry Hawley noticed that there was an absence of a monument dedicated to Schuyler,who worked alongside the U.S. President George Washington to win the Revolutionary War.

Hawley combined his love of beautifying the city that he and Theodora loved, his grief over Dorothea, and his passion for studying Revolutionary history to have Scottish-born sculptor J. Massey Rhind, sculpt the Schuyler statue.

Hawley also wrote a letter to then Albany Mayor, William S. Hackett, offering to donate the statue as a gift to the city, had an ordinance for the statue to be built in front of City Hall.

The Albany City Council accepted and passed the ordinance for the Schuyler statue to be built, according to Roseberry’s article. In June 1925, the statue was unveiled and with its reveal came a parade at Academy and Capitol Park and a speech by Charles H. Johnson, the state secretary of the Masonic Grand Lodge.

In 1952, the placement of the Philip Schuyler statue was controversial due to its prime location in front of City Hall. The area of the statue’s placement was transformed into a traffic circle. At the time, a proposal was made to have the statue removed and be placed at an area where citizens can admire it without jaywalking.

June 10, 2023, the Philip Schuyler statue was removed from Albany City Hall and placed in an undisclosed storage. Although Schuyler was seen as a Revolutionary War hero, he was also a slave owner. Prior to the statue’s recent removal, Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan signed an executive order for the statue to be removed and given to a museum or an institution for future display with the appropriate historical context in June 2020.

Although the future location of the statue remains unknown, the objects from the capsule,Shewchuk said, are now owned and in possession of AIHA. Once the exhibit ends, the artifacts will go into storage and the jewelry that the Hawleys once owned will be placed in a vault.

Shewchuk added that although there are no plans to reinstall the exhibition in the near future, however, some artifacts will probably end up in other future exhibitions if they fit the theme.

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