Category: Albany

In Albany’s West Capitol Park, hardly ever noticed by the throngs of workers lining up for the food trucks, is this reminder that General Washington passed through on the road (then the King’s Road) that now bears his name. In my pending move to Valley Forge, I expect I might find his name on…

The Albany, Schenectady, and Troy Blue Book was the official register of high society in the tri-cities. This ad from the 1917-18 edition was clearly aimed right at the blue bloods and patroons. The Albany Safe Deposit & Storage Co., at Maiden Lane and Lodge Streets, offered safes in which to store your silver…

We made reference the other day to Cotrell & Leonard without doing full justice to their incredibly important role in creating the academic (in all senses of the word) symbolism behind the American university cap and gown system. Given that we didn’t even have a university at the time it was created, Albany seems…

Cotrell & Leonard were prominent Albany clothiers who were on the stretch of Broadway that’s now Tricentennial Park. They were heavy on the outerwear and jumped into the motoring age by offering goggles. Gardner Cotrell Leonard also created the American system of caps and gowns, an unlikely specialty. (The old copy editor in me…

Just take a moment and appreciate the beauty of this ad the Killip Laundering Company, from 1917. Some fine letterer or sign-painter rendered that gorgeous logo in brush and ink. Another craftsman cut the design into a matrix that could be used to make a lead or brass cut, which could then be set…

If you stare at it long enough, it becomes clear that a HUGE number of the buildings along the midtown stretch of Central Avenue in Albany started life as car dealerships. Sometimes it’s apparent, the building just has that look: outsized windows or some other odd feature. Other times it’s hard to be sure.…

Well, it’s been a little while since Central Avenue, at least the midtownish portion of it, was Albany’s auto row, but back when horseless carriages were just starting to take off, pretty much every dealer was somewhere on Central just above Lark. This building at 272-274 Central Ave. started off life around 1912 as…

Some old buildings just have distinctive shapes. I’ve biked past this long brick behemoth at 1201 Broadway for years and thought, “that looks like an old car barn.” Turns out, it’s an old car barn. This was one of three buildings erected by the Albany Railway Company around 1889 to house its brand-new electric…

Updated! Okay, so you know the White Tower on Central, the one that stopped being a burger joint some time in the 1970s? The one that’s better known to my generation as the QE2 nightclub, and to the whippersnappers as The Fuze Box? Well, it wasn’t always there. It moved around. Twice. This is…

It doesn’t look like much anymore, but this building at 11 Central Avenue was once Albany’s first auto mart. It was reportedly built in 1916 at a cost of $150,000, had giant showroom windows and automobiles displayed on every floor, and had what was said to be the largest elevator in Albany to lift…