Category: Albany

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,…

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…

We’ll admit we were confused when, searching for something else, we found this business brief from the Knickerbocker News in 1941 announcing that four area appliance distributors were switching the lines they sold. Initially, our confusion was over Albany Garage dropping the DuMont TV line. This was confusing because Albany Garage was a parking…

From Munsell’s “Annals of Albany,” under Notes from the Newspapers we find this brief item from 1828: Oct. 7. Reynolds, who advocated the theory of the interior of the earth being hollow, delivered a lecture at the Atheneum, on the utility of a voyage into the interior of the globe by an entrance at…

Ahh, for the simpler times, back when we could all leave our doors unlocked and never had to fear crime. Turns out that was just fine, as long as it wasn’t your car doors you were leaving unlocked, because the early days of automobiling saw a surprising amount of theft. An article from “Motordom”…

We confess: we don’t really know what this is about. In Joel Munsell’s “Annals of Albany, Vol. 6,” among the many scattered “city documents,” we find this item titled “A Corporation Bill For Punch.” “On the 3d of Sept. 1782, Hugh Denniston, who kept a noted tavern in Green street, furnished certain persons for…

From the Schenectady Cabinet in 1855, this odd little advertisement that we suspect was meant to turn a particular phrase but which lost something in a spelling error: “Died Long Ago, Yet Liveth!” In reference to the dyeing and scouring establishment of Mr. A. Giffen at Albany’s old City Mill on Water Street, we…

For 105 years, the Sheridan Avenue steam plant has provided steam (and, once, electricity) to the Capitol, the State Education Building and, later on, the rest of the Capitol complex. But that’s the “new” plant, hidden down in the hollow. The original powerhouse for the Capitol was right down Hawk Street. It was tucked…