Trojan Hotel, the Elks, and Alling Rubber
There’s been a lot of excitement over plans to bring the old Trojan Hotel building back from the brink. Here’s an undated postcard, posted by the Boston Public Library, with […]
Troy
Sometimes, one Liberty Bell isn’t enough
A reminder to those who think the forefathers got it all right and a strict reading of the Constitution is all we ever need: they didn’t. The Liberty Bell wasn’t […]
Troy, 1838
From 1838, a view of Troy from the west bank of the Hudson River at the United States Arsenal, now known as the Watervliet Arsenal. Click and look at it […]
RPI admits women, 1942
In honor of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s 207th commencement ceremony tomorrow, we’d like to note that it was 71 years ago that the institute determined that having ovaries would not […]
Behold Henry Burden’s Horseshoe Machine
Margaret Proudfit’s biography of her father, Henry Burden, gets downright giddy over the invention that made his fortune, the horseshoe machine: Watch this wonderful piece of mechanism at work which […]
The Wonders of the Puddling Forge
It’s not possible to leave the biography of Henry Burden without relating this wonderful passage, “The Wonders of the Puddling Forge,” which we daresay borders on some sort of gothic […]
What Burden’s works looked like
So here’s an attempt to show just where the Troy Iron and Nail Factory and the rest of Burden’s burgeoning Upper Works were, which should give you an idea of […]
The Immense Iron Mills of H. Burden & Sons
As mentioned before, Henry Burden took charge of the Troy Iron and Nail Factory in 1822 when it was a smallish factory at the top of the Wynantskill in Troy, […]
Henry Burden
It’s baffling that Henry Burden isn’t better remembered around here. His inventions improved the iron industry, advanced mechanization and helped build the railroads. His use of hydropower on the Wynantskill […]
Mr. Burden’s Water Wheel
We’ve been talking about the Troy Iron and Nail Factory Company, which was powered by the falls of the Wynantskill, below what is now Burden Pond in Troy. Water power […]