Overview
Historic Cherry Hill stands on Albany's South Pearl Street, the gambrel-roofed house built in 1787 for Philip and Maria Van Rensselaer and occupied by five generations of one family until 1963, whose hoarded letters, textiles and furnishings make it a museum of unusual documentary depth — including servants' and enslaved people's lives in its early decades, told plainly. Its darkest chapter is fully documented: in May 1827, John Whipple was shot through a window of the house in a conspiracy involving his wife Elsie Lansing Whipple and hired man Jesse Strang — the sensational trial ended in Strang's hanging, among Albany's last public executions, while Elsie was acquitted; the museum interprets the murder forthrightly. Ghost telling follows quietly: staff and visitors describe footsteps on the back stairs near the shooting's path, a woman's figure, doors and cold spots — accounts the museum holds lightly beneath the history. Present Cherry Hill as documentary treasure first, its true-crime chapter sober, its lore a whisper. Tour details from the museum's official pages.