[1] It was built by Colonel Philip Kiliaen van Rensselaer for his bride Maria Sanders, granddaughter of Peter Schuyler.

Within several years during the 1820s it was both accommodations for the Marquis de Lafayette on his return visit to the U.S.[2] and the scene of a murder which led to the last public hanging in Albany following a controversial trial.

[3] Van Rensselaer's descendants lived there for nearly two centuries, preserving intact not only the original interior finishes but also its furniture, portraits, kitchenware and family documents.

The next block north has small, industrial buildings; larger facilities such as tank farms are located across I-787 and the railroad tracks east of the highway.

It leads uphill to the house, a two-and-a-half-story, five-by-four-bay rectangular frame dwelling on a stone foundation with clapboard siding.

By the end of the war Phillip Schuyler, who had his own large farm and house south of the city, trusted him to command ten men and oversee the storage of ordnance.

[8] In 1787, with the war behind him and independence achieved, van Rensselaer hired local carpenter Isaac Packard to replace the older, existing house on the farm, which he now called Cherry Hill, with the current structure.

In 1824 he hosted the Marquis de Lafayette at Cherry Hill on the Revolutionary War hero's return tour of the United States.

Stang was caught and confessed in full, believing that Albany's establishment would balk at hanging Elsie and thus spare him the same fate.

[9] Through the late 19th and early 20th century Cherry Hill was the property of Catherine Putman Rankin, a cousin of the van Rensselaers.

Five years later, that became a reality, and in 1971 it was among the first group of properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the city after the Schuyler Mansion.

[14] By the 21st century, that collection, mostly stored in the attic, was putting such a strain on the house's structural system that it had to be moved before the building collapsed from the weight.

In 2009, Cherry Hill closed to visitors and began a four-phase, $3.2 million restoration funded by various public and private grants.

The Historic Cherry Hill Association, which maintains the site, is offering behind-the-scenes tours of the work and other activities and programs in the interim.