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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…
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The Van Rensselaer Skating (and Curling) Park
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Stare at an old map long enough, and eventually you’ll be faced with a mystery you have to solve. We’ve stared at the Hopkins map of Albany from 1876 more than a sane person should admit, and every now and then a little detail jumped out at us, calling for attention. We ignored it…
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Let’s Look at the Record
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This panel is from a comic book called “Cliff Merritt Sets the Record Straight,” a production of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen from 1965 extolling the safety benefits the BRT brought to both workers and society. The fictional Cliff was being honored by the BRT for his years of service, and in conversation with…
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Curious Accident
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A singular accident happened on the Hudson River Railroad on Friday evening. The Express train which left this city on the above evening for New York, had not proceeded more than three or four miles below Greenbush, before the Engineer discovered that one of the immense driving wheels of the engine was gone. The…
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Victor Rickard is Fashion Forward
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We recently mentioned Schenectady’s aviation pioneer Victor A. Rickard, who not only managed the airport but gave flying demonstrations and lessons all over the area. But we missed that he was also involved in a fashion first, combining promotion for the nascent Schenectady Airport at Thomas Corners in Glenville with an air express shipment…
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The Remarkable Darkness of Sept. 6, 1881
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The remarkable darkness of Tuesday morning, September 6th, 1881, was phenomenal. A heavy yellowish mist obscured objects a hundred feet distant from persons out of doors, and dimmed to a pale-blue brilliancy the burning gas-lights within doors. The children in some of the public schools were dismissed and the operatives in a number of…
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The Marshall Sanitarium
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Again, poking around an old Sampson, Davenport map of Troy, say 1873 (they didn’t change much from year to year, and as we noted yesterday, sometimes included buildings that were never built). Again, finding something we had never known about before. This time what caught our eye was a pair of complexes near Mount…