NEB&W Guide to Cohoes, NY - Keveny Academy

Last Update: 2009-07-08

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• Bill Gill got the following info from Daniele Cherniak (Spindle City Historical Society). She said that Father Thomas Keveny became the third pastor of St. Bernard's Church in 1855 and started a school across the church five years later. It became known as St. Bernard's Academy in 1898 (and showed up labeled as such in c. WWI D&H maps, which is why we used to call this school by this name).
  • [Postcard of the original buildings.]
  • [Trackside. Valuation photo photocopy.]
  • [Rear view pre-1914 looking south. (The Academy is in the background.)]
  • [Valuation map c. WWI.]

• In 1929, a new school building was built on the site, renamed Keveny Academy. It was constructed in the widely popular Art Deco style of the late 1920's, but with vaguely Gothic touches, especially on the front. It was both an elementary school and high school and for a short time, held 8th grade classes for the Cohoes Public School system. By the 1970's, it was only a high school. It was closed down in 1986 and torn down c. 2003.
  • [Photo c. 1931, from the NEB&W D&H Collection.]
  • [Another photo c. 1931 showing the trackside, from the NEB&W D&H Collection.]
  • [Close-up of the above 1931 photo.]
  • [Sanborn map.]
  • [Front c. 2000.]
  • [Front, close-up c. 2000.]
  • [Front c. 2000 with city hall in the background.]
  • [Trackside c. 2000, composite of two photos.]
  • [Trackside c. 2000, the back section which was set back a bit (and which we didn't have room to model - would have loved to included the chimney but it would have run up against Geo. House Warehouse on our layout). Note the ornate brickwork between floors.]
  • [Other side c. 1930 postcard.]

• For the more on our layout, we started with the Walthers modern roundhouse which was originally intended as as a stand-in kitbashed model for the side walls.
  • [On the layout c. Oct. 2004.]
  • [Further work cutting it apart, c. Oct. 2004.]
  • [Further work putting it back together c. Oct. 2004.]
  • [Progress on the model c. Nov. 2004. Walls painted orange and over-coated with "Bambi Brown".]
  • [Another view c. Nov. 2004.]
  Bill Gill (Will's father) then took on the project to scratchbuild the front. He also did further revisions to the side walls. (This school is of particular interest to him, as his father - Will's grandfather - attended the Academy.)
  He spend a lot of thought and energy into selectively compressing the width of the front. By the time he was done with the model, this had clearly become a "final" structure, not a stand-in.
  • [Model photo of the side, April 2005.]
  • [Model photo three-quarter view, April 2005.]
  • [Model photo of the front, April 2005.]
  • [Model photo, March 2006.]
  • [Another photo, March 2006.]
  • [Another photo, March 2006.]
  • [Another photo, March 2006.]
  • [Another photo, March 2006.]

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