• Phoenixville Phriday: The Public Market Places

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    Carl Johnson

    As we’ve said before, this blog devoted to random snippets of history from Albany, Schenectady, and Troy will certainly not be stooping so low as to have a feature called “Phoenixville Phriday” just because we’ve moved to a new town far from our roots. Just because it’s Friday, and just because this one’s about…

  • Not Surprising, Says Architect

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    Carl Johnson

    Within a story on the 1905 collapse of the John G. Myers department store on North Pearl Street in Albany were some comments from Marcus T. Reynolds, without a doubt Albany’s most prominent architect of the day, one of a small handful of men who shaped what the city looks like to this day.…

  • The Myers Store Collapse

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    Carl Johnson

    Hoxsie recently found that the Art Institute of Chicago’s Ryerson & Burnham Archives include a number of images of Albany architecture. It has a wonderful view we hadn’t seen before of John G. Myers’ dry goods store, 39-41 North Pearl Street. This photograph by Albert Levy is from somewhere between 1885 and 1895; the…

  • Skinner and Arnold: Boilers and Elevators

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    Carl Johnson

    Last week we looked at this picture and talked about the Brainerd, Tanner Company, which notably made transom lifters. But a bit closer to the water was another company I hadn’t heard of, The Skinner & Arnold Steam Engine and Boiler Works. It turns out they didn’t only manufacture steam engines and boilers; they…

  • Albany’s Transom Lifters

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    Carl Johnson

    Over on the “Albany…The Way It Was” Facebook page, a participant posted a picture of a waterfront park I’d never seen before, from Herkimer to South Lansing. On the site of a former coal yard and cement plant, tucked in by the boiler works. I was curious about the surrounding industries, since the names…

  • The Great Western Gateway Exposition

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    Carl Johnson

    The grand opening of the Great Western Gateway Bridge, a decade in the planning, was a very big deal indeed. The bridge itself opened in December of 1925, but of course December in Schenectady is not a propitious time for celebrating, so it was some months before the great Gateway Exposition took place. In…

  • Construction of the Great Western Gateway Bridge

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    Carl Johnson

    “Successful Methods,” a civil engineering magazine from around about a century ago, took the time in November 1920 to detail how work on the Great Western Gateway Bridge was progressing: A FOUR CONTRACT JOB Work on Great Western Gateway at Schenectady, N.Y., is Divided Into Four Units Work is well under way on the…

  • Plans for the Great Western Gateway Bridge

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    Carl Johnson

    All week we’ve been recounting the hearing of 1915 that laid the groundwork for the Great Western Gateway Bridge between Schenectady and Scotia . It didn’t actually open until 1925 (just barely — it was in December). But the plans for the bridge were approved long, long before, back in September of 1916, according…

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