We’re not sure when they stopped publishing “The Blue Book,” the directory of the elite, but it’s probable that when they did, the need for shops like Mrs. Leake’s fell away. It takes a certain level of society to drive the need for tally, dinner, and visiting cards. That society was still going strong in 1917 when this was published.
It’s amazing to me that Maiden Lane, for a couple of centuries one of Albany’s most important streets for commerce, was mostly destroyed by “revitalization” in the ’70s. The upper end was bricked over for a plaza behind the Hilton, the lower end became nothing more than an alley between parking garages, and when they finally built the pedestrian walkway over I-787, they didn’t have the courtesy to name it for the ancient path to the river.