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The Edison Hotel
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Our recent post on the founding of the Edison Machine Works in Schenectady led to a number of questions about the Edison Hotel, long gone from the downtown scene but once one of the Electric City’s most important public spaces. The site, just east of Erie Boulevard on the north side of State Street,…
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Why Haven’t We Heard of John Kruesi?
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Last time we talked about Col. Robert Furman, who was critical in attracting Edison’s Machine Works to site in Schenectady. Today, his commercial building and his home still stand, and it seems likely enough that Furman street may be named for him. But the man who actually built the works, possibly the most skilled…
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Col. Furman and the Edison Machine Works
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Some of the details of how the Edison Machine Works (now you know it as General Electric – GE) came to be located in Schenectady are lost to time, but it’s very clear that it wouldn’t have happened had it not been for the efforts of Col. Robert Furman, once a real mover and…
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Albany, the Winter Resort
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This, from the New York Press in 1888: Mayor John Boyd Thacher boosting Albany as the winter place to be. “For the past few years the city has been at a standstill. The rich people – and we have many of them – were simply content to cut coupons and share a small dividend…
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The Science Fiction Writer Next Door: P. Schuyler Miller
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Growing up, my family lived next to a four-unit apartment house in Scotia, one of those places that was oddly transient on a street of homes where people generally lived for decades. There were young couples just starting out, divorcees figuring out their next steps, old people at the end. An interesting mix. And…
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Tompkins Knitting Machines
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This is the Tompkins Upright Rotary Knitting Machine, one of a number of inventions of Troy’s Clark Tompkins. Incredibly, his business is still in business, still making knitting machines – but in the Salt City, instead of the Collar City. Weise’s “The City of Troy and its Vicinity” (1886) tells the story of this…
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The Klondike Stairs, and the Klondike Ramp
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For almost our entire life, there was an odd remnant of concrete ramp along the hillside in Schenectady, just where I-890’s ramp to Broadway pitched down the hill. It stood until just a few years ago (at least as late as 2012), but had been blocked off by the highway since the 1960s, and…
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Henry Hart and Bret Harte
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We were pleased and surprised to be wandering through the galleries of Lancaster, PA this weekend and to come across a prominently displayed set of Bret Harte books that made the connection to Harte’s origins in Albany. If he’s remembered at all today, it’s probably for “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” an 1869 short…
