Category: Albany

For many, many years, the biggest problem in waste disposal for cities wasn’t what we think of as garbage — there was hardly such a thing as packaging, what there was was biodegradable, and food waste was hardly an issue. No, the problem was the daily disposal of coal ash. Nearly every building was…

While we were nosing around Pruyn Street through the miracle of StreetView, we noticed that while all the buildings that were occupied by The Embossing Company, National Bonsilate, and many more are long gone (and replaced by a Holiday Inn Express), one (really, two) of the ancient factory buildings across Pruyn Street still stands.…

Last time we went over the history of John Wesley Hyatt’s many adventures in celluloid. When we first wrote that up several years back, we were absolutely baffled not only by the number of little companies that were formed to turn his plastic to practical use. But also by their actual locations. For instance,…

This was originally posted on my old blog back in 2010. This has some minor updates. For years I meant to get a picture of this marker, located next to a defunct Friendly’s restaurant not far from our old Albany neighborhood, where Southern Boulevard meets Delaware Avenue. The shopping plaza and the Friendly’s were…

A long time ago, before Hoxsie even began, we told the story of how some local pettiness caused Leland Stanford to take the millions he intended for establishing a university in memory of his deceased son across the country, where he established Leland Stanford, Junior, University in Palo Alto, CA, instead of in Albany.…

Leland Stanford may be one of the most famous, or most important, people ever to come from Albany (born in the town of Colonie in 1824), although he found his fortune way out west — a little thing called the Central Pacific Railroad, the governorship of California, a US Senator’s seat, and much more.…

Well, if we’re going to mention Professor DuMouchel, long a key part of the (sacred) music scene in Albany, we’re going to have to mention someone who, after performing with DuMouchel very early in her career, carried the name of the city into international fame. She was Marie Louise Emma Cécile Lajeunesse, in Chambly,…

When we first learned of the old Albany character of Dr. DuMouchel, about all we knew about him was that he was the organist at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, and favored a frock coat and top hat which gained him a comparison to Dr. Mary Walker. Well, Dr. DuMouchel was much more…

When we were telling the tale of Dr. Dodge, one of old Albany’s well-known characters, we ran across the names of a number of other characters of the type that either don’t exist any more or just don’t get known. Perhaps it goes back to a time when the city was smaller (or more…

Does Albany still have characters? The old Dutch town used to be awash in them. One such character, way back when, was Dr. Dodge, a pitchman familiar to thousands who walked State Street hill. The Times-Union on Sept. 6, 1934, warned on its front page that “Dr. Dodge, Famed for Hat Collection, Seriously Ill.”…