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How Penn Central Ruined Everything, Railwise
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Those who remember Albany’s Union Station as a glorious destination in the ’50s and ’60s most likely benefit from the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. A 1969 column in the Knickerbocker News acknowledged that “In its dying days, Albany’s Union Station was an odiferous and dingy cavern, but still, if you looked hard, you could…
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The Volunteer Life Saving Corps
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In river towns, people would occasionally fall into the river and drown. So it only makes sense that in 1902, the newly consolidated city of Rensselaer proposed to have three life-saving stations along the riverfront, as outlined in the Albany Evening Journal of July 15: Rensselaer is soon to have three life saving stations.…
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With Lips As Close As Possible To The Mouthpiece: Albany Telephones, 1895
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Telephone service dates to the 1870s, with the National Bell Telephone Company being formed in 1879, and a long-distance operation by the name of American Telephone and Telegraph formed in 1885. Even as late as 1895, telephone service was rare enough that AT&T was able to publish a national telephone directory, listing all the…
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The Albany Brush Company
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We know that way back when, the Albany Penitentiary was supposed to be a model reformatory, one where prisoners were expected to be silent and work for their keep. In fact, From the time of its opening in 1846 on a plot of land behind what is now Hackett Middle School, the Penitentiary, a…
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Not Quite Man’s Best Friend
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In the Albany Hand-Book of 1884, which contained an alphabetic listing of topics of interest to both residents and strangers, we find this remnant of an earlier time, when an Albany ordinance prohibited all dogs from going at large in June, July, August and September unless properly muzzled, out of the belief that rabies…
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Roller Skating Rinks of 19th Century Albany
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We have a real love-hate relationship with George Rogers Howell’s “Bi-Centennial History of Albany,” from 1886. On the one hand, it’s a treasure trove of incredible information that is organized in ways the esteemed Joel Munsell couldn’t achieve. On the other hand, it’s mostly plagiarized, often self-contradictory, and almost completely unedited. But: treasure trove!…
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The Freshet This Time
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Munsell’s “Annals of Albany,” in the Notes from the Newspapers section, includes a description of the devastating spring flood of 1833, one of many notable floods in Albany’s history: May 16. A freshet which began two days previous was not at its greatest height and produced much loss and damage. South Market street was…
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Albany, Home of Nearly the First Globe Manufactory in the Country
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Howell’s “Bi-Centennial History of Albany” says that the Wilson boys of Albany, John and Samuel, were the sons of the first globe manufacturer in the U.S. That would have been James Wilson, born in Londonderry, N.H., and died in Bradford, Vt. According to Howell, around 1820 sons John and Samuel established a globe manufactory…
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Dog Days of August, 1944
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1944: The world was at war. Air conditioning was a rare feature in Albany homes and businesses. Factory work was still commonplace. And in August, the temperature reached 90 degrees in Albany on 27 days of a 31 day month. “You may have thought that every one of the 31 days was a scorcher,…
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Farnham’s Red Lion
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Many of us of a certain age remember a restaurant on Lark Street that went by the name of Farnham’s Larkin, popular with legislators of an even more certain age. Well, before Farnham’s Larkin, there was Farnham’s Red Lion. An article in the August 26, 1959 Knickerbocker News, headlined “English Pub Ideas Put to…