The Stockade Historic District is located in the northwest corner of Schenectady, New York, United States, on the banks of the Mohawk River.

Union College first held classes in a building within the district, and later it would be one of the termini of an early suspension bridge that was, at the time, the longest in North America.

It is bounded by the Mohawk on the north, the Binne Kill on the west and the former New York Central Railroad tracks, now used by Amtrak and CSX, on the east.

It is densely developed, mostly with small two-story attached houses, and is centered on the intersection of Ferry, Front and Green streets, where a circular plaza is built around a statue of Lawrence the Indian, a Mohawk who helped restore the settlement after an early catastrophe.

A group of Dutch settlers, mostly merchants and fur traders looking to do business with Native Americans, settled the banks of the Mohawk in an area between the present Ferry, Front and State streets and Washington Avenue in 1661.

[5] After the 1674 Treaty of Westminster ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War the settlement, like all established by the Dutch in New Netherland, came under British control as part of the Province of New York.

French troops and their Algonquin and Sault allies, retaliating for a series of British-backed Iroquois raids on their territory, were on their way to an assault on Fort Orange at present-day Albany when their scouts found that Schenectady's stockade was almost minimally staffed, and changed their plans to attack this target of opportunity.

The French and Indian Wars continued into the next century, ending in 1763, by which time the stockade had been extended to the river on the north.

Buildings and wharves along the riverfront and the Binne Kill accommodated the travelers and cargo that came overland from Albany and boarded bateaux for the trip west to Lake Erie.

[2] In the early 19th century engineer Theodore Burr, cousin of Aaron, having built one of the first significant crossings of the Hudson River at Waterford, turned his attentions to the Mohawk.

Six years later, during the rebuilding, the Erie Canal was completed, and most activity moved west to the vicinity of State Street, outside of the district, sparing the residential properties that make up the bulk of today's Stockade.

[6] As Schenectady began to grow due to industrialization, it grew eastward along Union Street (the main road to Troy and Watervliet at the time) and the canal, as the American Locomotive Company and General Electric made it "The City that Hauls and Lights the World".

Under the city's zoning regulations, any change to a historic building in a district that is visible from a public right-of-way must be approved by the commission.