Having recently hit a huge sale at the Baby Gap outlet in Manchester, Vermont, Brett & I decided to see if lightening could strike twice. The upside to living in upstate New York is that there are several retail outlets within close proximity to our place. A few months ago, while killing time, Brett stumbled upon a Gap outlet nestled inside a regular mall. We're not sure why it's there, but we're not going to argue...plus it's less than 30 minutes from our house!
I'm guessing the Rotterdam Square Mall in Schenectady has seen better days, but offers Macy's, TJ Maxx, Sears and K-Mart as it's anchor stores. The Gap outlet proved to be another bargain bin and we walked away with some really good deals. But when we started heading back to the car, we didn't realize was that we walked out the wrong door.
And y'all will never believe what we saw:
Look closely, that's a graveyard! At first I thought it might have been leftover Halloween decorations, but upon closer inspection, nope, it was the real thing.
After a little internet digging, I found out more about the mall's history. Turns out, the mall sits on a site once owned by the Vedder family. Harman Albertse Vedder bought the land back in 1672 and built a house on it. Around 1832, Harmens' great grandson Johannes sold the property to Colonel Daniel David Schermerhorn Campbell (that's a mouthful). Col. Campbell promptly built a 26 bedroom mansion on the land...no word on if that was the original structure of the mall or not though!
Ya know...the folks in the South get a bad rap for burying their dead in the backyard (think Elvis) but at least we don't dig our graves right outside the food court!
![IMG_0037[1].jpg](http://www.albany.com/i-heart-ny/IMG_0037%5B1%5D.jpg)
Heather Flanigan
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