-
World-Changers: Charles Proteus Steinmetz
•
If for any reason we ever felt the stirring need to rename Schenectady, the name of Steinmetz wouldn’t be a bad choice. There was hardly anyone who figured more in its industrial success, or who provided more groundbreaking research, academic enlightenment, or civic leadership. He was the paradigm of immigrant success, and a striking…
-
Happy Fourth of July week
•
When the Fourth of July falls in the middle of the week, America can’t decide which other days to take off, so pretty much the whole week is shot. Hoxsie has things to do this week, and is taking a couple of days off to get them done. In the meantime, the ladies of…
-
Lost and found, 1923
•
In the age of Craigslist, the weird old charm of perusing the classified ads in the newspaper is gone. Once we depended on them to find jobs, apartments, cars, and weird odds and ends. And nothing was odder than the lost and found, where people paid to list items they had been parted from.…
-
Measure for measure
•
Dutch roof line (Photo credit: carljohnson) In 1669, New York had been under British rule for five years, but the colony, her cities and her customs were no less Dutch (nor would they be, according to many reports, until the eve of the Revolution). As one way of establishing control, the British Governor…
-
Sifting the ashes
•
Ran across this 1923 Carl Company ad for dustless ash sifters, only $2.98 in Carl’s Busy Basement, and it occurred to me that even though I’ve heard the phrase “sifting through the ashes” all my life, I wasn’t 100% certain why one sifted through them. Having grown up with a gas furnace (albeit one…
-
Let your vital force flow
•
1923: Patent medicines were still going strong, and the practice of chiropractic, often tinged with quackery, claims that nerve pressure prevents the all-important Vital Force from reaching your organs. It has a diagram, so it must be scientific. The Friedman Building, where L.S. Blair practiced in Schenectady, is long since gone. It’s now the…
-
Cooking with gas!
•
Just imagine what it was to cook in the days before electric or gas stoves. Feeding wood or coal into a stove, cleaning out the ashes, never being able to control the temperature. Gas ranges must have seemed like a miracle. And made that “break-in” period on a new bride that much shorter. …
-
G.G. Maxon
•
This billhead is from what was then one of Schenectady’s most prominent businesses, G.G. Maxon & Son. They owned a large grain elevator right up against the Erie Canal, and dealt in flour, grain, meal, feed, produce, lime, cement and more. The elevator was right up against the canal at the corner of Pine…
-
Avery, Snell & Co.
•
Avery, Snell & Co. began as a crockery store in Amsterdam, NY known as Avery & White in 1874. Mr. Snell bought out Mr. White, and removed the wholesale department to Schenectady, leaving the retailing in Amsterdam. Presumably they branched beyond crockery; in 1878 they were listed as a dealer in bicycles as well.…
-
Coincidence? I think not…
•
Ran across this intriguing pair of articles about the Schenectady Savings Bank that were published in the New York Times on June 15, 1894. First, a dispatch from Albany stating that the Superintendent of Banks had found a shortage in the bank’s accounts upward of $10,000. And then, immediately below, offered without irony or…