Category: Amsterdam

Hey, remember that time when the Rug City was going to become the Silicon Valley? Well, almost, anyway, back when Coleco had operations in Amsterdam, New York, and its Adam family computer, assembled right there on the banks of the Mohawk, was supposed to be the next big thing. This one requires a little…

This year, it’s rain. In February of 1938, it was the breakup of ice and heavy winter rains that brought devastating floods to the Mohawk Valley. In Amsterdam, an ice jam wrecked the No. 4 plant of Mohawk Carpet Mills Shuttleworth Division and cut off natural gas service to the Rug City. Ice flows…

We’ve already looked at the letterheads of Amsterdam’s Pioneer Broom Company, (also here) but as was usual in the 19th century, there was almost always a rival company, and it was often just a block or two away. Here is a receipt, again from the Biggert Collection, from T. Peck & Co., manufacturers of…

Just a year later than the letterhead we saw yesterday, Amsterdam’s Pioneer Broom Company had a fabulous new letterhead made up for 1917, with crisp new cuts, elaborate typography, and P.B.Co Inc. logo. The letterhead (from the Biggert Collection) may have changed, but the subject had not. Rockwell Gardiner still wasn’t so good at…

The Schenectady area was once the broom corn capital of the country, back when the low-lying farms west of the city and in Scotia and Reeseville provided the raw materials for a highly necessary product. Out in Amsterdam, the Blood Brothers started up the city’s broom industry in the 1860s. Pioneer Broom Company was…