Category: Albany

As we’ve noted before, this beauty of a high school, Albany’s first built for that purpose, was designed by architect Edward Ogden and opened in 1876. By 1909, however, it was deemed woefully inadequate to handle the number of students, and the Board of Education was looking for a new building. On March 30,…

Perusing the petitions before the Albany Common Council in 1909, we find this petition from a Barbara Andres, city resident, who wished to respectfully show: “That, on or about the 6th day of January, 1909, at about seventy-thirty [sic] or eight o’clock in the evening of that day, your petitioner was walking down the…

Researching the Dey Ermand paint company, we came across the interesting information that Hugh Dey Ermand, head of the company around the turn of the century, lived at 248 Hudson but also owned a string of residential properties on the near north side of the city. Specifically, he owned 13 residential buildings known as…

Yesterday this never-before-seen photo was posted over on the “Albany…The Way it Was” Facebook page. Most noticeable is the old location of R.B. Wing, ships’ chandlers and dealers in every kind of oil imaginable, apparently. R.B. Wing survived into modern times as a construction supplier in one of the landmark buildings of Broadway, but…

In researching the homes built by Edward Ogden, we ran across one he built in 1890 that was named for Bainbridge Burdick at 935 Madison Ave. in Albany. A moniker like “Bainbridge Burdick” is always worth another look, and this search didn’t disappoint, as we turned up the case of “Bainbridge W. Burdick v.…

When talking about Albany’s leading architects, it never seems like Albert W. Fuller gets his due, and yet he had a huge influence on the look of Albany through the years, and had commissions and influence across a wider geographic range than many of the  others. Fuller was born in 1854 in Clinton, New…

In the middle part of the 19th century, Albany took on a new look that was largely the work of father and son architects by the name of Ogden and their partners. Edward Ogden, born in England in 1826, came to Albany at the age of 13. He apprenticed as an architect with fellow…

There could hardly be an architect who had more of an impact on the look of Albany as it grew into a substantial city in the early 19th century than Philip Hooker. He was widely respected, influential in politics and society Hooker’s classical stylings let the city start to rise above its simple Dutch…

Babbitt & Co. was once one of Albany’s greatest clothiers. When they took out this ad in 1913, the business was 13 years old and their store was located at 451-453 Broadway, just about at the intersection with Maiden Lane. By 1927 they had moved up to 67 North Pearl. Neither of their buildings…