As I mentioned not too long ago, Troy did once have a magnificent City Hall. It was located at the corner of Third and State, where Barker Park is today, across from St. Paul’s and Pfeil’s Hardware. At the time I had only a drawing, but now have found a magnificent glass negative photograph that purports to be from 1905. Like many glass negatives, it is absolutely full of stunning details. Here is the bell tower, which proudly proclaims it to be City Hall, and dates it to 1875. (It actually didn’t open until October, 1876.)
In one of the elegant windows, with their striped awnings drawn back, we can see the back of a man in suspenders and a sleeve garter. There was also a lovely iron fountain.
On the State Street stairs, a dapper gent featuring a straw boater peers out.
Just east on State Street, the Hotel Lovelock, which prominently offered Piel Bros. Real German Beer (German by way of Brooklyn, that is), and offered “All The Comfort’s of Home,” proving that our forebears were not free of struggles with the apostrophe.
Across Third Street, our photographer (for the Detroit Publishing Company, whose importance in the preservation of historic views across the country cannot be overstated) captured these ladies, waiting.
There were also other ladies, waiting, perhaps for their husbands, engaged in a confab while holding up the corner of Edwards Department Store. I always knew Edwards as one of the most prominent stores in Syracuse, which was just fading into nothingness when I lived there in the 1980s. I was unaware they had a Troy location. That corner is now (republished in 2021) taken up by Hatchet Hardware, formerly Pfeil’s Hardware (and before that, Stanley’s). The building itself is now called The Conservatory, and if it was built in 1903 that was pretty fresh work these gents were leaning up against.
Want the whole photo from the Library of Congress, in all its magnificence?
Click on the pic for a giant-sized, ultra-detailed view of the beautiful building that was Troy’s City Hall from 1876 until it burned in 1938.