Author: Carl Johnson

  • Victor Rickard is Fashion Forward

    Victor Rickard is Fashion Forward

    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…

  • The Remarkable Darkness of Sept. 6, 1881

    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…

  • The Marshall Sanitarium

    The Marshall Sanitarium

    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…

  • The College That Never Was

    The College That Never Was

    Imagine our surprise when we were looking at an old map of Troy (as we do) and suddenly saw something there we’d never seen before, and had never even heard of: St. Peter’s College. And it turns out there was a reason we hadn’t heard of it – it just didn’t last long. In…

  • Schenectady’s Premier Aviator, Victor Rickard

    Schenectady’s Premier Aviator, Victor Rickard

    Sometimes we run across a name from local history and have to wonder how it’s possible that the person in question isn’t better known. And then we get vexed by trying to know them better, at the remove of a century or so. Such is the case of Victor Rickard. While Albany had an…

  • The Mohawk Overall Company

    The Mohawk Overall Company

    Saw this old postcard posted on the “Schenectady History – Photos and Discussions” Facebook group the other day, and it set us to wondering why we had never heard of the Mohawk Overall Company. It turns out it wasn’t around very long. The Mohawk Overall Company opened up in Schenectady in 1909, with a…

  • Albany’s Flying Bull

    Albany’s Flying Bull

    December 5, 1929. We offer no explanation.

  • Gov. Bouck’s Grand Quick Step

    Gov. Bouck’s Grand Quick Step

    More historic Albany sheet music, the product of historic Albanians. This one (again from the Lester Levy Sheet Music collection at Johns Hopkins) is “Gov. Bouck’s Grand Quick Step,” as performed by the National Brass Band, Albany. It was composed and arranged for the piano forte, “and respectfully dedicated to his excellency,” by Oliver…

  • The Wide Awake Quick Step

    The Wide Awake Quick Step

    Well, here’s another piece of all-Albany sheet music that we just had to share. It’s 1860’s The Wide Awake Quick Step! A brief history of early American and Civil War music reports that “The ‘Wide Awakes’ were an early Republican political group that supported the election of Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860. The…

  • My Cane Bottom Chair

    My Cane Bottom Chair

    Our endless search for all things Albany and Troy recently turned up this bit of sheet music from 1856 (courtesy of the Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection of the Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries and University Museums). Published in 1856 by the music publisher J.H. Hidley of 544 Broadway in Albany, “My Cane Bottom…