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General Grant’s funeral procession
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We all know (we do all know this, right?) that General Ulysses S. Grant finished his military memoirs in a small cottage at Mount McGregor just before dying there on July 23, 1885, a bit more than twenty years after Appomattox. The cottage, loaned him by Joseph Drexel of New York, was subsequently presented…
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The Troy Menands Bridge
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While we’re on the topic of bridges, let’s move up the river to this old view of the Troy-Menands Bridge. What was originally a lift bridge, as shown here, was opened July 17, 1933 after several years of planning and the usual Albany-Troy tussles that had gone along with bridging the Hudson for a…
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Trojan Hotel, the Elks, and Alling Rubber
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There’s been a lot of excitement over plans to bring the old Trojan Hotel building back from the brink. Here’s an undated postcard, posted by the Boston Public Library, with a view looking south down Third Street in Troy. On the left, the Trojan Hotel, its iconic sign already in place. To its right,…
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Sometimes, one Liberty Bell isn’t enough
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A reminder to those who think the forefathers got it all right and a strict reading of the Constitution is all we ever need: they didn’t. The Liberty Bell wasn’t enough. To call attention to injustice and draw support for women’s suffrage, a “Justice Bell,” an imitation of the Liberty Bell, was cast and…
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Troy, 1838
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From 1838, a view of Troy from the west bank of the Hudson River at the United States Arsenal, now known as the Watervliet Arsenal. Click and look at it large, because this lithograph by William James Bennett has everything: boats that are sailed, steam-powered, and rowed. Industry and church steeples. Working horses, working…
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RPI admits women, 1942
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In honor of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s 207th commencement ceremony tomorrow, we’d like to note that it was 71 years ago that the institute determined that having ovaries would not necessarily preclude a person from understanding engineering and science. Today, that “limited number” of women students is as high as 29% of the student…
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Behold Henry Burden’s Horseshoe Machine
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Margaret Proudfit’s biography of her father, Henry Burden, gets downright giddy over the invention that made his fortune, the horseshoe machine: Watch this wonderful piece of mechanism at work which in a second of time makes a horseshoe. Before you are two strong frames between which are four revolving shafts geared together and getting…
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The Wonders of the Puddling Forge
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It’s not possible to leave the biography of Henry Burden without relating this wonderful passage, “The Wonders of the Puddling Forge,” which we daresay borders on some sort of gothic pornography: The chemical elements of pig-iron are such as to render it unfit for any serviceable use in these mills, and it therefore undergoes…
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What Burden’s works looked like
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So here’s an attempt to show just where the Troy Iron and Nail Factory and the rest of Burden’s burgeoning Upper Works were, which should give you an idea of just how much this tiny corner of Troy has changed and changed back — from wooded vale to center of industry to pleasant steep…
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The Immense Iron Mills of H. Burden & Sons
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As mentioned before, Henry Burden took charge of the Troy Iron and Nail Factory in 1822 when it was a smallish factory at the top of the Wynantskill in Troy, where Mill Street runs up the hill to Campbell Avenue today. “With more than ordinary foresight he caught glimpses of that future in which…