Juvederm in Slingerlands, NY.

The history of Slingerlands begins in 1850 when the Albany, Rensselaerville, and Schoharie Plank Road Company was established by the state to construct a plank road from Albany, through Slingerlands, to Gallupville in Schoharie County. In 1854, the state authorized the company to abandon or sell portions and to turn other sections (including that part in Slingerlands) into a turnpike and charge tolls. The post office was originally called Normanskill and was built in 1852 with William H. Slingerland as the first post master. In 1863, the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad was built through Slingerlands with a station established here as well. William H. Slingerland was the surveyor of the road, and since his route came in $600,000 less than a previous survey the company named the station here Slingerlands in his honor. In 1870, the post office also took the name Slingerlands. After having been in the rear of a grocery store for a hundred years it moved to the Tollgate Building in 1953, until the 1990s when a newer larger location was built near the Price Chopper Plaza. In 1989, the New Scotland post office was closed and the 400 residents it served were transferred to Slingerlands’ ZIP Code.

Aerial view of Slingerlands Bypass (to the left) and New Scotland Road (to the right).

New Scotland Road through Slingerlands was labeled as part of New York State Route 85 in the 1930 renumbering of state highways. In 1968, the Slingerlands Bypass was constructed as a two-lane extension of the Crosstown Connection, a limited-access highway in the city of Albany; Route 85 was then routed onto this highway. The original plan was to connect with the Delmar Bypass near New York State Route 85A, thereby bypassing Slingerlands, it and the Delmar Bypass were never finished due to a lack of funding. In 1987, the developer of the Juniper Fields sub-division agreed to build for the town a 1,700 foot extension of the Delmar Bypass to Van Dyke Avenue, and the developer of Delmar Village agreed to build a 2,750 foot extension of Fisher Boulevard to Delaware Avenue, this then left only a 6,000 foot extension of the Delmar Bypass to complete a full loop around Delmar and Slingerlands. At the time it was still the long-term goal of the town to extend both bypasses themselves to their original meeting point near Route 85A. In 2007, the existing Slingerlands Bypass was reconstructed from two to four lanes and the highway was extended behind the Price Chopper Plaza to meet New Scotland Road over Le Grange Road opposite Cherry Avenue Extension. Each intersection, four in all, were converted to two-lane roundabouts.

The Slingerlands Homeowners Association was founded in 1972 and is the oldest neighborhood association in the town of Bethlehem. The neighborhood group had become moribund by the late 1980s, but was reactivated by controversy over a new shopping center and succeeded in having the shopping center, today the Price Chopper Plaza, scaled back by almost half.

Learn more about Slingerlands.