My Hometown: Amsterdam, N.Y.

Date:July 6, 2006 | Author: | Category:Hometowns

Sanfordcarpet

Editor’s Note: This blog post is a kickoff to "My Hometown," a series of blog posts by Zillow employees who will reflect on the homes and towns where they grew up. Part historic musings and part therapy, we hope you enjoy it.

My hometown: Amsterdam, NY 12010
Approximate value in 1960: $40-55,000
Tax assessed value today: $80,000 (No Zestimate is available since county records are not sufficient for this area)

I grew up in in Amsterdam, a city in Upstate N.Y. which was a booming blue-collar town from the 1940s through the 60s. The economy thrived thanks to numerous factories and mills in the area, including GE, which was just 12 miles away in Schenectady, N.Y. My parents ran a tavern in Amsterdam with a prime location right across the street from Mohawk Carpets. This company proved to be the main lifeline for the city up until the 60s when it moved south for cheaper labor in South Carolina and Mississippi. Looking back, I can see that the exodus of the factories, one-by-one, delivered the critical blow to a city that was once 60,000 strong, but is now hovering around 17,000. This is just one town in upstate New York that is bleeding people due to economic downturns and high taxes.

The house I grew up in was a Cape Cod-style home with four bedrooms and one bathroom. Somehow we all managed, but these days, the thought of one bathroom for a family of six is nuts. My father helped another guy build the house in 1951 for a $20K. When I go back to visit my father several times a year, I always take a drive through the "grand" part of town where the Shuttleworths (Mohawk Carpets) and Stephen Sanford (Sanford Rug Mfg. — photo postcard above from Roots Web) owned huge mansions. Those homes could fetch about $400-500K these days, but if you were to magically drop one of those homes in Seattle, the price tag would skyrocket to about $4-6 million.

Real estate in Amsterdam has been stagnant since the 60s where homes for sale sit for months, if not years. It’s not that the homes aren’t good — they are. It’s just that the job situation is bleak. If you’ve ever seen the movie "Nobody’s Fool," or read Richard Russo’s book of the same name, that pretty much captures the essence of Amsterdam, a city along the Mohawk River that had a fabulous past, but not much of a future. When I asked my father what people now do for a living in Amsterdam, he said, "Pinch pennies." 

One last note: Amsterdam has one major celebrity to call its own: Kirk Douglas, whose real name was Issur Danielovitch Demsky.