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Mohawk National Bank of Schenectady
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Last time, we talked about the remarkable wig giveaway of 1970 at the Mohawk National Bank of Schenectady – and that led me to dig a little bit into the history of the bank that was once an anchor of lower State Street and is now, like nearly all local banks, long gone. According…
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Open an account, get a . . . free wig?
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Way back when, it was quite usual for banks to offer some kind of incentive for opening a new account. Premiums like toasters, golf umbrellas, pen and pencil sets were frequently offered. That’s less common now, as the incentives are more likely to be straight up cash or gift cards, but our little local…
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Dining on the Night Line
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Thanks again to the Culinary Institute of America’s digital menu collection, we have this incredible (but undated) menu from the Hudson River Night Line. The last night boat ran in 1941, and the line had lost considerable glamor in the Depression years, so we’re going to guess this was from the 1920s or earlier.…
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A Meal at the Van Curler Hotel
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By complete accident of algorithm, I recently discovered that the Hudson Valley’s Culinary Institute of America has a website featuring historic menus, and happily some of them are from local institutions. So here’s one, unfortunately without a specific date, from Schenectady’s Van Curler Hotel. When the Van Curler was opened in 1925, it was…
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“She’s honest and all right”
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Just a little snippet from the old hometown, way back in 1933, when a “medium” from Hampton Manor was accused of swindling an Albany widower – a widower who, it must be said, really wasn’t hard to swindle. Whether it was age, grief or simple stupidity, the news accounts of the day give no…
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Beautiful Details from Schenectady, 1834
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I was going through my ideas files when I ran across an 1834 map with details about the Erie Canal from various local communities. It turned out I had already written about the maps themselves for Albany, Watervliet, and Schenectady – but that’s okay, because what I really wanted to emphasize was the incredible, simple…
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The Schenectady Gazette: Available Everywhere!
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In 1925, Schenectady and the tri-cities area weren’t the only places you could pick up a copy of the Schenectady Gazette. It was available all over upstate New York, apparently, and even in such far-flung locations as Boston, New York City, Hartford, Philadelphia, Detroit, and even Miami. Though Miami was certainly a stretch, the…
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Carl’s Peaches and Cream, and Radios
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While we’re talking about Carl Company ephemera, I ran across a trademark issued to the Carl Company – for the mark “Peaches and Cream,” as applied to “cotton piece goods, linen piece goods, and toweling.” I mean, when I think “linen,” I think “peaches and cream,” right? Perhaps not. This isn’t anything I remember,…
