Once was the time when buildings like Albany’s National Savings Bank building held more business than all of downtown holds today. (More than any of your suburban office parks, either.) […]

This article originally appeared at  All Over Albany. It came to a great conclusion that happened to be wrong; shortly after publication, I learned that in fact the oldest business […]

In 1888, the city of Albany had about 95,000 people living within its borders (already having dropped to 29th place among cities). So what were the newspaper options for those […]

Almost every day of my life, I cross the Hudson River, sometimes several times, sometimes at several points. If I’m feeling devil-may-care, I may throw in a crossing of the […]

A gentle and timely reminder from your friends at Hoxsie: Chapter 81 of the Laws of 1785 was passed to restrict your New Year’s Eve celebration options: “Whereas great dangers […]

Not many businesses from the 1905 Albany Directory are still around. Danker Florist has been around since 1898. Amazingly, they outlived Maiden Lane, once one of Albany’s most important commercial […]

From the 1905 Directory of the cities of Albany and Rensselaer, a detailed description of what were then called “hack fares,” the equivalent of taxi fares today, which applied to […]

Worst metaphor ever. Hands don’t devour. Considering the huge reputation of Thurlow Weed, publisher, kingmaker, party boss, whoever wrote this ad for his publishing firm (in 1905, years after his […]

Well, the makers of “Albany” Venetian Blinds may have been blind to the implications of unnecessary quotation marks, but at least they were fairly consistent in calling into question where […]