Category: Albany

Back in 1914, Arnold Brunner’s “Studies for Albany” presented an ambitious plan for a park that would be called “Sunken Garden.” Brunner wrote that the three blocks between Lancaster and Chestnut streets, from Main Avenue to Ontario, had been acquired by the city of Albany; “The rectangular form of this piece of land seems…

John Swinburne, for whom Albany’s Swinburne Park and New York Harbor’s Swinburne Island are named,  led a life of medical accomplishment – a founder of Albany Hospital as well as of his own private dispensary, a professor at Albany Medical College, a noted expert in what would become forensics, chief medical officer of the…

His biographer (perhaps Joseph McKelvey — the book is unclear) barely sketched the early life of Dr. John Swinburne, once Albany’s foremost surgeon. Fatherless and supporting his family at 12, Swinburne nevertheless managed to get an education from local public schools in Lewis County, and then managed to attend the Fairfield Academy, one of…

Whish’s 1917 “Albany Guide Book” notes that Swinburne Park “commemorates Albany’s greatest surgeon.” A century later, the name Swinburne is all but forgotten, but he lived a most memorable life. An 1888 biography was titled “A Typical American,” while making it clear that he was anything but – it calls him an eminent patriot,…

There can be no doubt that in 1870, a “dollar store” had a different meaning than it does today. The Tweddle Hall Dollar Store of Albany, located in the landmark building long gone from the corner of State and Pearl, was proud of its white metal show cases, its “immence” stock of beautiful and…

Some of the grand old homes and buildings around Albany still have lovely ornamental rails and fences, and there’s a good chance many of them were made by Simeon Cunliff, Jr., of No. 20 Quay Street. In this ad from 1858, we have another great example of the rather humble proclamations of advertising of…

Another advertisement from the 1858 Albany City Directory, this one for Johnson & Offenheiser at the bottom of State Street, where they dealt in foreign and domestic fruit, eggs, poultry, game and more. All consignments from the country promptly attended to. All organic and free-range, too, I believe.

From 1858, an ad for the Marble Pillar Restaurant, ironically using a typeface meant to resemble wooden logs, not marble. “This old and popular House has recently undergone thorough repairs; new Furniture has been added, and the modern improvements introduced, so necessary to the comfort of the traveling public. Having had many years experience…

Ignatius Jones’s “Random Recollections of Albany” included strong and yet confusing praise for a figure I hadn’t heard of before, one Solomon Southwick. Southwick was born into a Newport, Rhode Island publishing family, but circumstances led him to serve on fishing boats before apprenticing to a New York City printer. As a journeyman in…

English: An etching of Dutch-style rowhouses in Albany, New York, United States (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Continuing with Ignatius Jones’s 1850 recollections of Albany before it had grown into a mid-19th century megalopolis, or at least one of the principal cities of commerce in the expanding nation. When Jones first came to Albany in 1800,…