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A Boal of Grog for Thomas Sager
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We confess: we don’t really know what this is about. In Joel Munsell’s “Annals of Albany, Vol. 6,” among the many scattered “city documents,” we find this item titled “A Corporation Bill For Punch.” “On the 3d of Sept. 1782, Hugh Denniston, who kept a noted tavern in Green street, furnished certain persons for…
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Died Long Ago, Yet Liveth
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From the Schenectady Cabinet in 1855, this odd little advertisement that we suspect was meant to turn a particular phrase but which lost something in a spelling error: “Died Long Ago, Yet Liveth!” In reference to the dyeing and scouring establishment of Mr. A. Giffen at Albany’s old City Mill on Water Street, we…
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William Bolles Has Something for Country Merchants
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While we’re stuck in 1855, let’s take a look at this ad from the Schenectady Cabinet for the shop of William F. Bolles. “Country merchants will find at 81 State-street, a large assortment of Paper Hangings, School Books, and Letter and Cap Paper, at New-York prices.” We can only presume that by advertising to…
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Possibly Painless Dentistry
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From an 1855 edition of the Schenectady Cabinet, an advertisement for B. Stickles, surgical and mechanical dentist. Let’s take “mechanical” to mean that he could create things like false teeth and bridges, not that he was a wind-up automaton. All branches of the profession carried on, and all work warranted. Chloroform or Ether administered…
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The Rota-Ray Map and a Blinger of a Campaign
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Some time ago, the folks at All Over Albany stumbled on this great little scrolling map device, posted at the David Rumsey Map Collection. Not only is it possibly the coolest motoring map device we’ve ever seen, but it appears to have generated quite a bit of excitement in those early days of motoring…
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Barringer & Co., The New York Store!
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Back in 1855, one of the finest stores in Schenectady, New York, was Barringer & Co. (“The New-York Store!”), at 87 State Street. In this ad, they proclaimed that they were now receiving, and offering for sale (a good move, business-model-wise), a complete assortment of British, French and German staple and fancy dry goods,…
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Look for the Name “Joe”
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While digging up the dirt on Spiro Agnew’s father’s Hygienic Lunches, we ran across many, many ads by this character, Joe Green, whose menswear store was at 412 State Street in Schenectady, over the Hygienic Lunch (some years after Agnew had decamped for Baltimore). Many of the ads exhort the reader to Look for…
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The Old Capitol Power House
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For 105 years, the Sheridan Avenue steam plant has provided steam (and, once, electricity) to the Capitol, the State Education Building and, later on, the rest of the Capitol complex. But that’s the “new” plant, hidden down in the hollow. The original powerhouse for the Capitol was right down Hawk Street. It was tucked…
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The Woolworth’s That Wasn’t A Woolworth’s
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Everybody remembers the old Woolworth’s in Schenectady. But what they don’t remember is that it wasn’t a Woolworth’s, at least not originally – it was a W.H. Moore’s. William H. Moore was a native of Saratoga Springs, born in 1841; his family moved to Watertown as his father found work with the Rome, Watertown…
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The Morner House
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Checking through the Library of Congress collection on Flickr, we ran across this 1911 photo published by Bain News Service, marked “Morner House Near Albany.” If it looks like there was quite a hubbub going on at the Morner house, well, there was. For starters, “near Albany” is relative; Bain also described the house…