If you live in one of the fine Pine Hills homes built by the Albany Land Improvement and Building Co. somewhere around 1890, when streetcar travel started to make the western reaches of Albany attractive to the middle class, I’d guess there’s a good chance your original boiler and radiator was a Gurney. William J. Caine of 27 Pine Avenue, who just happened to be the superintendent of the company, felt it his duty to inform the Gurney company that after using it two years, he hardly knew how to express himself, “as it combines all the good qualities NECESSARY TO MAKE A FAMILY HAPPY.” A child of fifteen could run it! Central heat, while no longer quite a novelty, was certainly a comfort that the older generation had done without and now valued greatly.
No doubt your boiler was long since scrapped (and an entire battleship made from it, by the looks of it), but there’s a good chance there are still some Gurney radiators up in Pine Hills.
