Well, it’s been a little while since Central Avenue, at least the midtownish portion of it, was Albany’s auto row, but back when horseless carriages were just starting to take off, pretty much every dealer was somewhere on Central just above Lark. This building at 272-274 Central Ave. started off life around 1912 as home to the Adirondack Motor Car Company, which sold Overland, Garford and Moyer autos (built in Syracuse), and sometime around 1919 became Carpenter Autos, another Overland dealer. At the time, Willys-Overland was second only to Ford in auto sales.
The President of the Adirondack Motor Car Company was Maynard N. Clement, an attorney in the firm of Swift and Clement, and then Clement and Lee, who had offices on State Street (in the old Arkay Building) and lived at 127 S. Lake Ave. In the city directories of the time, his association with the motor company isn’t mentioned, but there’s a lovely bit of letterhead with his name on it available on eBay, detailing the return and exchange of some auto parts with Messrs. Spraker and Rapp of Palatine Bridge, N.Y.:
