• True crime, 1914: Armed robbery, carjacking, murder

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    Carl Johnson

    While digging up info on Schenectady’s Hygienic Lunch, we ran across this charming tale of armed robbery, carjacking, and the death of a dentist. Here’s the story from the Schenectady Gazette of August 18, 1914: Cashier Swears Conway Robbed Electric Lunch George Volk and Hygienic Lunch Man, However, Say Prisoner Is Not the Man…

  • The Hygienic Lunch, and the Father of the Veep

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    Carl Johnson

    File this under: How did we not know this? Hoxsie grew up hard by Schenectady in the 1970s and was perhaps more tuned than your average teenager to both politics and local history. And yet, until this week, we had no idea that the father of Vice President Spiro Agnew, one Theodore Agnew (originally…

  • How to Google Things in 1973

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    Carl Johnson

    The kids and their interwebs these days. They have no idea how the world worked before there was a worldwide web. Well, here’s how it was done. Say you wondered where to find a particular oven cleaner. You could just wander aimlessly from grocery store to grocery store, hoping to find what you needed.…

  • Organizing Schenectady’s Restaurants, 1922

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    Carl Johnson

    Hoxsie was perusing some back numbers of “The Mixer & Server,” the official journal of the Hotel and Restaurant Employes [sic] International Alliance and the Bartenders International League of America (as one does) and came across this September 26, 1922 report by A. Martel, International Organizer, under the banner of “What Our Organizers Are…

  • Albany: The Ampersand City

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    Carl Johnson

    Hoxsie has often referred to Albany as “The City Without a Nickname.” Other than “The Capital City,” other nicknames that it may have deserved – “The Piano City,” “The Celluloid City,” “Drainage Basin of the Erie Canal” – never quite stuck. But one of its ephemeral nicknames should have stuck, because without its contributions,…

  • The Albany Eagle Air Furnace

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    Carl Johnson

    From an 1839 edition of the Albany Argus, an advertisement from the Albany Eagle Air Furnace and Machine Shop, where William V. Many (formerly of Corning, Norton & Co.) manufactured just about everything that could be made of iron. We won’t try to replicate their emphatic use of capital letters in telling you that…

  • A Cure for What Ails Strangers and Seamen

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    Carl Johnson

    An odd little item from the Albany Argus of July 17, 1832 stood out to us: Albany Lock Dispensary, No. 2 Green, two doors from State street, and No. 2 Store lane, two doors from Green street. Exclusively devoted to the treatment and prevention of a certain class of diseases. DR. COOKE continues to…

  • Murdering the Electrician

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    Carl Johnson

    Most things on Hoxsie are found when we’re looking for other things. This is one of those things: while searching for some background on the Albany and Hudson Railroad, we came across a brief mention in the San Francisco Call of May 17, 1907 of the murder of the railroad’s chief electrician, Alonzo Hewitt.…

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