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Troytown Shirt Corporation
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Just a quickie today, but this ad from 1957 caught our eye. It’s from a time when there was still enough garment manufacture in the area that a call for women with industrial sewing experience would not have gone unanswered. Yes, this was a time when employment ads were separated into male and female…
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The Centennial Exhibition Awards Capital District Manufactures
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Last week we mentioned that Edgar Smith’s dry air refrigerator, a product of Albany manufacture, was featured at the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, what was essentially the first world’s fair held in the United States and a celebration of the tremendous progress, particularly industrial and agricultural progress, the young country had…
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Cohoes in the 1870s: Mills and More
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Well, we’re on a bit of a Cohoes jag, and why not? The Spindle City sometimes had a bit of an inferiority complex, failing to get the respect of the Capital City or the Collar City, and after its boom it was always a working class mill town. But what a working class it…
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MOUS?* I do not believe they exist.
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Not everyone was elated by the discovery of the Cohoes Mastodon in 1866. Some went so far as to call it a humbug, which was saying something in those days. Arthur Masten reported in his The History of Cohoes, New York that there were a number of letters published in several newspapers by people…
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A Mastodon Unearthed
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In 1866, the Harmony Company of Cohoes set about building its Mill No. 3, a new cotton factory on the east side of Mohawk Street across from their first building. While the foundation was being excavated, the skeleton of a mastodon was discovered, “an event which awakened great interest here, and caused Cohoes to…
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The Cohoes Company Canals
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If you’re going to build hydropower canals, you’ve got to have water. (We started to touch on this topic yesterday.) From the earliest days of the Cohoes Company’s canal operations, they had control of a wing dam that diverted water from the river into their canals. About 1866, they constructed a sophisticated gatehouse that…
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Cohoes: The City of Canals
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The 1843 map of the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers contained some great detail about Cohoes, the city that grew up on the legendary falls and came to be known as the Spindle City for its role in the textile industry, much of which enjoyed hydropower well before steam engines were available.…
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More Mappage: Confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk, 1843
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Hoxsie is on a bit of a map jag. Again thanks to the resources of the NYS Archives, we have a very detailed representation of the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers with the villages and islands, published by Luther Bliss, bookseller of Lansingburgh in 1843. Once again, click on it to zoom…
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Olendorf’s Tourist Home, Cohoes
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Another pair of postcards from the Boston Public Library collection. These depict Olendorf’s Tourist Home on Route 9 in Cohoes (but really, Latham). The tourist home was a standard fixture of the major routes in those days, and back before the highways came through Route 9 was the only road north to the Adirondacks…
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The Markers Speak: Loudon’s Ford
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If it weren’t for this historical marker, we might have completely forgotten about Loudon’s Ford, which is on the Mohawk River just a bit above Cohoes Falls. The sign is for “Loudon’s Ford / British and Continental / army ford protected / August – September 1777 / by Generals Enoch Poor / and Benedict…