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Ran-Zee Sign
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Another old picture from a stray wander around Schenectady, already 10 years ago. On an old concrete wall underneath the railroad tracks, along the parking lot at Broadway and Liberty, the remnants of some old painted signs were tucked under a tangle of vines, and the only bit that could be made out was…
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WGY Coin & Stamp
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We recently ran across this picture we took 10 years ago of a fading sign for parking for the WGY Coin & Stamp Company of Schenectady. This was affixed to the side of the building at the corner of State and South Ferry, now gone. WGY Coin and Stamp was long a fixture at…
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“One Thing I Know, They Won’t Find Arsenic”
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As rough and tumble as Albany could be in the early to mid 19th century, some of the most notable crimes occurred out in the suburbs. One was the shocking poisoning of a young wife, Maria Van Dusen Hendrickson, by her philandering young husband, John Hendrickson, Jr. It was one of the earlier cases…
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Fred Lillie, Armless Announcer
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While describing the relative safety of employment at the Schenectady GE works in 1913, we glossed over what was one of the most dangerous forms of employment of the time, railroad work. At that point, railroad work carried a fatality rate of 2.4 deaths per 1000 employees. Non-fatal accidents, of course, were even more…
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Fishing Is Dangerous!
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Ripley’s “Romance of a Great Factory” from 1919 gives us an unsurprisingly romantic view of the Schenectady General Electric works at that time. In addition to providing us with Charles Steinmetz’s private shorthand method, its appendix section (titled “Fragments”) gave a little recitation of industrial accident facts to show that life at GE was…
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How Dr. Steinmetz Writes
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Charles Ripley’s “Romance of a Great Factory” is a 1919 love letter to the Schenectady General Electric works, printed by the Gazette Press, and with an introduction by none other than Dr. Charles P. Steinmetz, the electrical wizard. In an afterword section titled “Fragments,” Ripley presented a short explanation of “How Dr. Steinmetz Writes,”…
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You Whippersnappers Don’t Even Know The Smell of Good Burlap
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AllOverAlbany was good enough to indulge our sentimental reminiscences of when every neighborhood was lousy with grocery stores, stockboys’ hands were covered in purple ink, and you could close the wrapper on a box of Rice Krispies. Read all about it over at their site.
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Delavan House Menu: Maybe Just The Toast
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From the collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia, an 1875ish breakfast menu from Albany’s leading temperance hotel, the Delavan House, in the era when Charles Leland was running it (which puts this between 1867 and 1882). Founder Edward Delavan was a rabid temperance advocate who brought prohibition to the state of New York…
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History Links! Get Yer History Links Here!
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It’s been a while since we did a Phoenixville Phriday. So, a couple of cool bits of local history news came out of our new hometown region this week. The first was the amazing news that little Phoenixville was, for 17 years, hiding a secret treasure trove. Revolutionary War muskets, cannons, paintings, sculptures, uniforms,…