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Albany from the Riverfront, 1911
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The NYS Archives dates this incredible photo of the Albany riverfront to 1911. The view is from the Albany Yacht Club pier, looking across the footbridge that crossed the basin to the very foot of State Street. Very notable are the ends of the buildings advertising three of Albany’s local beers, making that important…
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The State Education Building Under Construction
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From the NYS Archives, a rare view of the iconic State Education Building under construction. The Archives dates this as Jan. 1, 1912, but a number of other photos in the archive carry January 1 dates, so I think it’s a default date rather than an actual one. But if this was taken in…
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A Mastodon Unearthed
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In 1866, the Harmony Company of Cohoes set about building its Mill No. 3, a new cotton factory on the east side of Mohawk Street across from their first building. While the foundation was being excavated, the skeleton of a mastodon was discovered, “an event which awakened great interest here, and caused Cohoes to…
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The Erie Canal in Albany and Watervliet, 1834
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From the NYS Archives, a detailed survey of the Erie Canal from 1834. These are beautiful maps of ink, wash and charcoal. Click on them to see them in simple but glorious detail. This first one shows the beginning of the Erie Canal, and with the alignment of Lawrence Street we can see now…
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A neighborhood gone: The Brewery, 1951
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We were originally going to just skip over this aerial of the Schaefer Brewery from 1951 (from the New York State Archives) because Hoxsie is a temperance site and others are far more interested in Albany’s brewing history. But then we zoomed in and, holy cats! is there a lot here. Dead center of…
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Boating down the Hudson, 1938
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For those of us who never got to experience the glory days of the Hudson River Day Line (or the Night Line), here’s how it looked back in 1938. The scenery is virtually unchanged, though a couple of bridges have been added along the way. 10 years later, the original Hudson River Day Line…
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Albany Law Journal, 1876
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A few notes of interest from the Albany Law Journal, 1876 : You could still carelessly place a bust on a balcony without fear of legal repercussions. Apparently traveling on Sunday was still a no-no. But if so, why then did the trains run?…
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Albany Medical Center from the air, 1951
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From the New York State Archives, another brilliant aerial view of Albany, this one focusing on the Albany Medical Center, June 12, 1951. Unlike some of the other aerials we’ve looked at this week, this one doesn’t look so terribly different in the present day. Of course, Albany Med has sprawled, and the foreground…
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Familiar territory: Albany from the air, 1948
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Another view from the sky, courtesy of the New York State Archives’ Fairchild Aerial Surveys collection. Thanks to the presence of a number of notable landmarks, an awful lot of this view from June 2, 1948, looks just like Albany today. And a lot of it does not. Yeah, so that looks familiar. Front…
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Veterans Administration Hospital
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Albany’s Veterans Administration Hospital is nearly complete in this aerial view from June 12, 1951, from the Fairchild Aerial Surveys collection of the New York State Archives. The new hospital rose on the site of the former Albany Penitentiary, which had moved twenty years before; when its buildings came down is not clear. The…