Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Local Atmosphere

College Prowler Take

In general, students find Troy to be a boring and dangerous place where it is hard to have fun. If you are from a big city where there is always something going on, you will definitely be disappointed by the atmosphere in Troy. Albany, Saratoga, and Grafton Lake are all good get-away spots if you have a car.

Troy may not be the nicest place to live, but to its credit, it is a very old city with a lot of history. However, since RPI wants its students to stay on campus, if you are into history and want to find out any interesting facts and tidbits about the city, you have to do it on your own. As far as entertainment options, there are a few decent golf courses in the area at reasonable prices, not to mention plenty of hills to go hiking, and creeks if you feel like cliff jumping on a hot afternoon. RPI will tell you that you should never go downtown—and while it can be scary at night, as long as you don’t wander off by yourself and stick with a few friends while walking the streets, you should be okay. Distractions are welcome to RPI students to break the monotony of studying; whenever you have a chance to do something different, you should.

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Students Speak Out

RPIGS says: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 2014 Computer and Information Sciences

Troy is a kind of quiet town.... Troy is a kind of quiet town. There are some good restaurants and some places to party. The general consensus is that "there's nothing to do in Troy," which is not necessarily true. My favorite things are the farmers' market every Saturday and neat antique stores. 12345 Local Atmosphere: March 08, 2009 Report

Anonymous says:

Troy sucks, simply stated. It... Troy sucks, simply stated. It drains all life and energy out of you. There are other universities present, such as University of Albany and Union. Don’t stay away from anything, really—you’re going to need every diversion possible to maintain any semblance of sanity. 12345 Local Atmosphere Report

Anonymous says:

Probably one of the reasons that... Probably one of the reasons that RPI has such a good academic reputation is because of the city it is located in, Troy, NY. There is nothing to do in downtown Troy, and even if there were, you wouldn’t actually want to venture into Troy. A city such as this leads to an isolated campus, where there is not a heck of a lot to do during the long winter months except concentrate on your studies. And when you are paying top dollar for a school such as RPI, that’s probably not a bad thing anyway. 12345 Local Atmosphere Report

Anonymous says:

Troy is a dump. There are like two... Troy is a dump. There are like two other all-girls schools in Troy, and there are some big schools in Albany, but not too much. Troy got voted like the number one college town in America, but that is total bull. Basically, we were discreetly informed not to wander downtown alone at night. While there aren’t murders going on, there were two rapes in the last month of school we were in. No students were involved. I don’t mean to scare you, for those where the only real incidents I can think of. As for stuff to visit, the best time I have had in Troy, and maybe all of school (and two of my friends will second this), was watching a huge junkyard burn to the ground. That’s how pathetic Troy is. 12345 Local Atmosphere Report

Anonymous says:

Some people hate Troy; I don’t... Some people hate Troy; I don’t know if anyone really loves it. I am in the middle. The Russell Sage women’s college is down the hill a ways, and Siena, University of Albany, and a community college aren’t too far away. Troy has the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, one of the top-five acoustically-perfect performing venues in the United States. 12345 Local Atmosphere Report

Facts

Did You Know?

5 Fun Facts about Troy:

• Several movies have been filmed in downtown Troy’s historical district, including The Bostonians (1983), Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1993), and H.G.Wells The Time Machine (2002).

• Clemet C. Moore’s Night Before Christmas was first published in The Troy Sentinel on December 23, 1823 under the title A Visit from St. Nicholas.

• In the late 19th century, Troy had a professional baseball team known as the Troy Trojans, and on September 22, 1881, they set the all-time record low for attendance at a major league game—12. The record still stands.

• In 1864, an Irish immigrant named Kate Mullany formed the Collar Laundry Union, the first women’s union in the history of the United States. In 1998, Hillary Clinton gave a speech at the Mullany home, located on Eighth Street.

• Troy is known as the “Collar City” because Hannah Montague cut the collars off her husband’s shirts so that she would not have to repeatedly wash the entire shirt simply to get the collar clean. This gave rise to an entire collar industry, and is where the term “white collar” originated. One of the bridges that takes you across the Hudson in Troy is called the Collar City Bridge.

Famous People from Troy:

John Evers – Hall of Fame baseball player
Michael “King” Kelly – Hall of Fame baseball player
Emma Willard – Education pioneer
“Uncle Sam” Wilson – National icon

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