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‘Count’ Max Shinburn, King of the Bank Burglars
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We’ve written before about some of the prisoners of the Albany County Penitentiary, a rather legendary lockup. But the old city jail, on Maiden Lane just behind City Hall, “hosted” one of the most notorious bank robbers of his age, Maximilian Shinburn. It’s a tale of safe-cracking, safe-blowing-up, and possibly of love with a…
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An Albany Bride In the Soup
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We present this particular story in the spirit of Ripley’s “Believe It or Not,” at least in this sense: This appeared in the Albany Morning Express on July 22, 1895, and you may choose to believe it, or not. The headline was “An Albany Bride in the Soup. / The Expression Is Here Used…
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The High Schools of Scotia
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A while back in a Facebook group, someone commented on this old postcard of the original Scotia High School, which opened in 1905 on First Street, just about across from where Center Street comes in. Anyone of a certain vintage knows this was later the junior high school, and, for an even certainer vintage,…
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The Last of the Albany Piano Pieces!
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We wanted to finish up our survey of Albany piano makers. We covered John and Horace Meacham, Francis P. Burns, Marshall and Wendell, McCammon, and of course Boardman and Gray. There were others, and there were also some ancillary industries, like the specialists who only built the actions for the pianos. Afred Dolge, in…
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Piano Wars — The Strange Story of McCammon Pianos
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Did ya think we were done with the Albany piano makers? Not quite. For one thing, there were quite a lot more – various offshoots and apprentices going off on their own from the established makers that kept Albany a vital pianomaking center for decades. And there was another huge piano maker that we…
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Boardman and Gray, Albany’s Premiere Piano Builder
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We’ve already talked about a number of Albany piano makers (Marshall and Wendell, Francis P. Burns, John and Horace Meacham), and there are a number of others hardly worth mentioning. But by far the longest-established, mostly highly regarded and best remembered of all the piano makers was Boardman & Gray. Sources all seem to…
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Marshall and Wendell Pianos
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When we talk about long-standing Albany piano makers, the name of Boardman and Gray comes up the most frequently. But there was another piano maker that lasted for about a century that hardly gets any attention at all, even though to this day their pianos are loved, played and sold – Marshall and Wendell.…
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A Phototypesetting Mystery
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Hoxsie departs from its love of Albany, Schenectady and Troy history for a brief foray into offset printing history – Someone recently reached out to a page I administer for the AM Varityper Phototypesetters, sending along some pictures of something that had been in his house since he bought it ten years ago. And…
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Francis P. Burns, Albany Piano Maker
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As we have mentioned, Albany had a very, very rich history of piano manufacture. There are many little rabbit holes to go down, but a lot of the names are at least a little familiar. So we were surprised to find one we didn’t know, prominently featured in “Pianos and Their Makers – Men…
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Meacham Pianos of Albany
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Someone recently responded to an old article we wrote about all the pianos that were once manufactured in Albany. While the Boardman & Gray pianos are probably the best known of the Albany manufactured instruments, they were asking about pianos by John and Horace Meacham, who started it all around 1829. Pianos had just…