Category: Schenectady

Once upon a time, the construction of a new office building really meant something – it was a point of pride for a community to know that a modern structure with all the modern amenities was being constructed to serve the premiere business of the city. The Lorraine Block was just such a building.…

For at least 64 years, Patton and Hall was a well-known business name in Schenectady and beyond, and even today there is evidence of their success, in faded signs on the building that housed them from the start.  Jesse Patton was born in the town of Florida in 1870, and was moved to Amsterdam…

What was going on in Schenectady on March 30, 1906? Well, not ragtime! This article from the Amsterdam Evening Recorder tells of Mayor Jacob Winne Clute’s displeasure with street musicians that were proliferating at the time. The headline was “No More Ragtime in Schenectady,” with a subhead of “Mayor Clute Passes on All Itinerant…

One of those odd little items that catches the eye caught our eye in going over an article from the Schenectady Gazette in 1948. “Barrows From Here Carried California Gold,” it proclaimed, apropos of pretty much nothing. (Well there were some other stories on local history in the section, but still . . .…

In digging all this old stuff up, we run across all kinds of oddities that are fascinating, yet trivial. If we can’t figure out something more to say about a little snippet, can’t tell some of the story of the people, businesses or buildings involved, then we’re likely to just let it pass. But…

So we talked a little bit about the life of Leland Stanford (whose life could fill more than a volume or two) and father Josiah Stanford (about whom information is sadly scant). Today, we’ll talk about Leland’s brother, Charles, who despite having gone off to California with Leland, returned and made a lasting impression…

Just inside the entry to Proctor’s Arcade in Schenectady is this plaque, prominently and proudly proclaiming that an important first in technology took place right there in the historic Proctor’s Theatre: “On May 22, 1930, Proctor’s Theatre was the site of the first projected television show on a giant screen before a large audience.…

Marie Sklodowska Curie, born in the Kingdom of Poland and later a citizen of France, became world famous for her research on radioactivity and the discovery of polonium and radium. She disproved the theory that the atom was indivisible, and led the way to modern physics. She was the first woman to win a…

Yesterday we talked a little bit about Schenectady’s Edison Hotel, and its predecessor, the Givens Hotel. In researching that, we tripped upon an article from the Gazette back in 1936 that gave a brief account of a number of even earlier hotels in Schenectady, so we thought we’d pass that along. Pearson’s “A History…