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The Fire Record, 1887
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Fire was recently in the news for taking a terrible toll on a city with the unthinkable destruction of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. But it was a loss of property and history only, not of life. Fire was once a much, much more pressing concern for cities. We’ve written briefly before on…
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The Lorraine Block and a little more Stanford history
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Once upon a time, the construction of a new office building really meant something – it was a point of pride for a community to know that a modern structure with all the modern amenities was being constructed to serve the premiere business of the city. The Lorraine Block was just such a building.…
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The ‘Other’ Max Shinburn, Jail House Dog
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Max Shinburn’s legend lived on in Albany, or at least in the Albany jail – in the form of a jailhouse dog, owned by Jake Fulder, which went by the name of “Max Shinburn.” On July 3, 1896, the Albany Morning Express hailed “The Name of Max Shinburn / Again Appears Upon the Records…
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‘Count’ Max Shinburn, King of the Bank Burglars
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We’ve written before about some of the prisoners of the Albany County Penitentiary, a rather legendary lockup. But the old city jail, on Maiden Lane just behind City Hall, “hosted” one of the most notorious bank robbers of his age, Maximilian Shinburn. It’s a tale of safe-cracking, safe-blowing-up, and possibly of love with a…
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An Albany Bride In the Soup
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We present this particular story in the spirit of Ripley’s “Believe It or Not,” at least in this sense: This appeared in the Albany Morning Express on July 22, 1895, and you may choose to believe it, or not. The headline was “An Albany Bride in the Soup. / The Expression Is Here Used…
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The High Schools of Scotia
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A while back in a Facebook group, someone commented on this old postcard of the original Scotia High School, which opened in 1905 on First Street, just about across from where Center Street comes in. Anyone of a certain vintage knows this was later the junior high school, and, for an even certainer vintage,…
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The Last of the Albany Piano Pieces!
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We wanted to finish up our survey of Albany piano makers. We covered John and Horace Meacham, Francis P. Burns, Marshall and Wendell, McCammon, and of course Boardman and Gray. There were others, and there were also some ancillary industries, like the specialists who only built the actions for the pianos. Afred Dolge, in…
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Piano Wars — The Strange Story of McCammon Pianos
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Did ya think we were done with the Albany piano makers? Not quite. For one thing, there were quite a lot more – various offshoots and apprentices going off on their own from the established makers that kept Albany a vital pianomaking center for decades. And there was another huge piano maker that we…
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