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Tompkins Knitting Machines
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This is the Tompkins Upright Rotary Knitting Machine, one of a number of inventions of Troy’s Clark Tompkins. Incredibly, his business is still in business, still making knitting machines – but in the Salt City, instead of the Collar City. Weise’s “The City of Troy and its Vicinity” (1886) tells the story of this…
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The Klondike Stairs, and the Klondike Ramp
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For almost our entire life, there was an odd remnant of concrete ramp along the hillside in Schenectady, just where I-890’s ramp to Broadway pitched down the hill. It stood until just a few years ago (at least as late as 2012), but had been blocked off by the highway since the 1960s, and…
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Henry Hart and Bret Harte
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We were pleased and surprised to be wandering through the galleries of Lancaster, PA this weekend and to come across a prominently displayed set of Bret Harte books that made the connection to Harte’s origins in Albany. If he’s remembered at all today, it’s probably for “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” an 1869 short…
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James Knight Moves His Tavern
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So many things to stare at on this beautiful map of Rexford and Aqueduct Crossing, from somewhere after 1842 when the original Erie Canal was expanded. The first aqueduct, now too narrow for the new specifications, was replaced by an entirely new aqueduct, and the narrow old lock was replaced by a double-lock, the…
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A Map of Beauty
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We worry sometimes that in this digital age, knowledge of the world as it is is ephemeral. Perhaps this will change and there will be a realization of the need to document what we know and what we think we know in something other than alterable electrons. When our children and grandchildren want to…
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The Ladies Who (Serve) Lunch
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There was a time when every downtown department store had some sort of dining room or lunch counter. The swankier establishments had swankier dining; in some cities they rivaled any of the restaurants as a place for the carriage trade to go for lunch (and catered especially to women). At the other end of…
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Corning Your Beef
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While not entirely Albany specific, we thought this article from the Albany Argus in 1862 was a good lesson in what life was like before refrigeration. It’s hard to fathom now what people went through to keep meat “fresh.” This supposed letter (which may just be an editorial contrivance; they were common enough in…
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The Destruction of Tweddle Hall (and more of its history)
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We’ve talked before about Tweddle Hall, the center of Albany civic life for what turns out to have been a mere 21 years. Malt merchant John Tweddle built it at the Elm Tree Corner to meet the need for a public hall for lectures, entertainment, and meetings in the booming city, with the building…
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If Crackers Counted, Troy Would Be Lansingburgh
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Like a lot of cities in the 1800s, Troy grew through expansion, annexing neighboring areas whose names are often forgotten. But Troy’s growth wasn’t a foregone conclusion, and there was a time when the residents of the village of Lansingburgh thought it was their fair town that would subsume the once sleepy little farm…
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R.S.V.P. to V.R.S.P.; or, the Young Lady Didn’t Invite Him to Skate
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In 1870, the St. Lawrence Republican (of Ogdensburg) ran a story headed “R.S.V.P., or the Van Rensselaer Skating Park,” and promised that “The following ‘local story,’ taken from the Albany Evening Journal, is told in good enough style to make it interesting to the general reader.” Since we were already on the topic of…