An odd departure, but I always have a hard time remembering what little stores were where in the downtown Schenectady of my youth, and it’s harder now that this (fortunately preserved) section of State Street is being rehabbed. So, above, a lousy picture I took on a cold, dreary afternoon in 1978; below, a pic of the works in progress from 2007. The building at the farthest right above is gone, replaced by the new Bowtie Cinemas building. I’m sorry I didn’t get any shots of it before it was taken down, it was magnificent.
Before the commercial takeover of “upper” State Street, above the Erie Canal, after the Canal closed in the early part of the 20th century, this area was still largely private homes. I suspect all four of these buildings in the new shot were once homes, and were surrounded then by the Carl Co. building on the left and Witbeck Hardware (the tall tower) on the right.
As much as we think things are stable, they’re not. Just 14 years before my 1978 picture, nearly all the busineses in this shot were different. In 1964, the Time Center Jewelers was there, but there was also the Four Twenty Eight Restaurant and Marshall’s Foot Wear. The sign that says “Peggy’s” had previously said Fox & Murphy, a sporting goods store. Bern’s Camera was alone in the Close Building.The building housing the Squire Shop may have been vacant in 1964; the Squire Shop was then down by the overpass, next to the Gazette. There was a place called Rudolph Bros. Inc, and the Vendome Restaurant, which must have decamped from the original Vendome Hotel, which had been across the street.
My grandmother waitressed in Peggy’s Restaurant for a number of years after Wallace’s Department Store closed. She originally went there with the woman who managed the Wallace’s restaurant, Agnes Beauville, who opened and operated Beauville’s. Before too long it was sold and became Peggy’s.
it all looks a far sight better than it did in 1978.