When I get out for a lunch walk, I often pass this ancient building on State Street, right beside the building where I started my state career almost twenty four years ago. It stands somewhat incongruously with more modern buildings surrounding and towering over it, and I love it all the more for that. There is a plaque on it denoting its historical significance as the place where Anneke Jans Bogardus once lived. She was one of Albany’s more notorious denizens, having earned herself the nickname of ‘The Vulture’ and cultivating a reportedly cantankerous personality during the 1600’s, when she is said to have come into swaths of impressive land in New York due to a surprise gift left her in a family will.
Disputes and questionable records left the whole story a little bit muddy, which is somewhat fitting, as mud would one day save Anneke’s ass. Her rumored ornery disposition with others was on full display when she allegedly got into an exchange when passing several local men out for a break of pipe-smoking. The story is that she lifted her skirt and presumably mooned them, for which they took her to court. She was cleared when she explained she was merely attempting to keep the hem of her skirt out of the mud.
That’s a woman after my own heart. Leave them with something to talk about and end up with your name on a plaque that survives for centuries. And who doesn’t get a kick out of a good mooning?
