32 Washington Ave Schenectady

Dora Jackson House/Schenectady County Historical Society. The house at 32 Washington Avenue was built in 1895 for Mrs. Dora Jackson, widow of Alonzo Clinton Jackson, by her son Jones Mumford Jackson. The Dora Jackson House is a reproduction of a transitional New England Georgian style house of the 18th century with Federal period detailing. Mrs. Jackson was the granddaughter of Benjamin M. Mumford and Harriet Bowers. The Mumford, Bowers, and Jackson families owned a number of properties along Washington Avenue, forming an informal extended family compound. Her aunt, Harriet Bowers Mumford Paige, was a diarist who described and commented on life in the neighborhood during her lifetime, and included many anecdotes about people and events of Schenectady’s past in her diaries. Dora Jackson lived in the house until her death in 1899. Purchased in 1920 by the General Electric Company and used as the clubhouse of the G.E. Women’s Club, the building became the headquarters of the Schenectady County Historical Society in 1958. The Dora Jackson House was designed by William Appleton Potter (1842-1909), an American architect best known for buildings designed in a High Victorian Gothic vocabulary, including numerous buildings on the campus of Princeton University, as well as churches, municipal buildings, and private homes. W. A. Potter was also the half-brother of Edward Tuckerman Potter (1831-1904) who designed the Nott Memorial at Union College. The front facade is organized into three bays that are separated by pilasters with Ionic capitals and a gabled roof with chimneys at the ridge line. The entrance surround is capped by a scrolled broken pediment with a pineapple, used in the 18th century as a symbol of welcome and hospitality, featured in the center of the broken pediment. A Palladian window is located at the second floor above the entrance. The interior of the house is organized around a formal center hall floor plan. 

Sketch of the life of Dora Jackson
Rear view of Schenectady buildings