Category: Railroads

For the year ending Sept. 30, 1865, the Railroad Commissioners of the State of New York offered the following statistics for a year in which steam and horse railroads were both still operating: New York that year had 3089.84 miles of steam roads, with 962 engines, 820 first class passenger cars, and 181 second…

The Hudson River Bridge Company built the first structure to cross the Hudson at Albany. When it opened in 1866, it was simply the Hudson River Bridge. Once the Maiden Lane Bridge opened at the end of 1871, the older bridge was often called the North Bridge. Eventually, it picked up the moniker of…

The New York State Engineer and Surveyor’s report from 1864 contains an extensive history of The Hudson River Bridge Company, the operation that built Albany’s iconic Livingston Avenue Bridge. The report contains a huge amount of detail, some of which we’re reproducing here because a huge amount of detail on these old structures is…

In his Nov. 4, 1950 column in the Knickerbocker News, Charles L. Mooney recounted days of long ago – Oct. 21, 1928, to be exact, and in doing so gave us a peek into the working of political campaigns, railroads, police work and the press, back in the days when the Knick Press was…

The Library of Congress includes this flyer in its ephemera collection, with a possible date of 1847 and no more information than that. Apparently Abner A. Pond’s Rail-Road Exchange offered board and lodging (single meals 25 cents) on Broadway, with its entrance at 25 & 27 Maiden Lane. “This House adjoins the square used…

1893’s Street Railway Journal said that Albany was “one of the first cities in the United States to rise to the dignity of passenger transport by means of a street car system.” But street car didn’t yet mean electric trolleys; the earliest trolleys in Albany were actually horse-drawn, run by two different companies. The…

Did you ever get hit with something you feel like you really should have known, something that should just be common knowledge, and yet you had no idea? So here’s one of those things: American Express was started in Albany. And, there was a Wells Fargo connection as well. (Have to give thanks to…

The last Albany architect of significance was Marcus T. Reynolds. Working from 1893 through 1930, Reynolds created some of Albany’s greatest landmarks and, sad to say, was the last architect to have a positive impact on the city. (One could argue that for Wallace Harrison, architect of the Empire State Plaza – but that…

When Albany was the hub of commerce, connecting the great markets of Montreal, Boston and New York to the heartland and the new West, being able to get your goods to our ancient city was highly important. Connection to the major railroads or the Erie Canal was critical. What is now the Interstate 88…