Category: Albany

Last time we talked about how Albany developed its first “cosmopolitan” high school, Philip Schuyler, which opened in 1934. But we hadn’t gotten to the bottom of how it came to be in the old Public School 14, instead of in a new high school building. Confusing, because in all the years leading up…

We will admit, before working on this story, we’d never before heard of the term “cosmopolitan high school.” But in Albany in the ‘30s, it was a term everyone would have been familiar with, as the future of schools was being debated and the city tried to deal with an ever-growing young population. A…

Last time around (yeah, it’s been a while – Hoxsie vacations where there is no wifi) we talked about the proposed innovation of the boulevard stop. Not surprisingly, years later, traffic was still a concern in Albany, and in 1955 the commissioner of public safety, William V. Cooke, “sounded a warning to motorists to…

While the automobile was already reshaping our society in the 1930s, it was still a time when even adding some stop signs would make the news. Essentially, the boulevard stop system would remove red light signals, create longer uninterrupted straight-aways and require those entering them or crossing them from side streets to come to…

A couple of weeks back, a colleague complimented our typing skills, and we said that we had started life as a typesetter. “What’s that?” he asked. “Exactly,” we replied.  Even in the time when typesetting was a valued skill, type rarely made the news. So an article from the Albany Evening News from 1937…

It’s 1927, and you need to get the word out about vaccination for diphtheria. There’s no social media to speak of, so you have limited options. Newspapers, of course. Direct mail, though mass mailings are expensive and computerized mailing lists don’t exist. Radio, but although radio has exploded in just a few years, it’s…

Ah, the glorious days of yesteryear, when all the men were gentlemen, all the ladies ladies, and society knew how to behave. The lowliest laborer wore a suit, f’cryin’ out loud. Not like today! That must be why, in 1898, the Albany city board of health was most perplexed at the failure of the…

When we began our career in Albany not quite 30 years ago, a group of young and hungry (literally) Senate Fellows sometimes found lunchtime solace with a touch of imagined elegance in the quiet confines of the Rice Gallery of the Albany Institute of History and Art. Every now and then we wondered how…

Last time we detailed the celebration around the installation of the Albany City Hall carillon in 1927, and noted that one of the prime movers behind that was William Gorham Rice, who was an interesting character in Albany history. Rice (nearly always referred to by his full name in the newspapers of the day)…

One of the things Hoxsie misses about downtown Albany is the sound of the City Hall carillon ringing out at lunchtime. But while H.H. Richardson’s City Hall building was equipped with a tower when it opened in 1883, it had no bells. They didn’t come until 1927, in a major effort by two newspapers,…