Author: Carl Johnson

  • More Mappage: Confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk, 1843

    Hoxsie is on a bit of a map jag. Again thanks to the resources of the NYS Archives, we have a very detailed representation of the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers with the villages and islands, published by Luther Bliss, bookseller of Lansingburgh in 1843. Once again, click on it to zoom…

  • Erie Canal in Schenectady, 1834

    These maps of the Erie Canal from 1834 are so beautiful, we couldn’t resist sharing another one from the NYS Archives Digital Collection. Click on it to see it much larger.  The path of the canal through downtown Schenectady should be familiar to anyone who knows Erie Boulevard and, conveniently, most of the street…

  • The Erie Canal in Albany and Watervliet, 1834

    From the NYS Archives, a detailed survey of the Erie Canal from 1834. These are beautiful maps of ink, wash and charcoal. Click on them to see them in simple but glorious detail. This first one shows the beginning of the Erie Canal, and with the alignment of Lawrence Street we can see now…

  • A neighborhood gone: The Brewery, 1951

    We were originally going to just skip over this aerial of the Schaefer Brewery from 1951 (from the New York State Archives) because Hoxsie is a temperance site and others are far more interested in Albany’s brewing history. But then we zoomed in and, holy cats! is there a lot here. Dead center of…

  • Boating down the Hudson, 1938

    For those of us who never got to experience the glory days of the Hudson River Day Line (or the Night Line), here’s how it looked back in 1938. The scenery is virtually unchanged, though a couple of bridges have been added along the way. 10 years later, the original Hudson River Day Line…

  • Albany Law Journal, 1876

    A few notes of interest from the Albany Law Journal, 1876 :         You could still carelessly place a bust on a balcony without fear of legal repercussions.             Apparently traveling on Sunday was still a no-no. But if so, why then did the trains run?…

  • Albany Medical Center from the air, 1951

    From the New York State Archives, another brilliant aerial view of Albany, this one focusing on the Albany Medical Center, June 12, 1951. Unlike some of the other aerials we’ve looked at this week, this one doesn’t look so terribly different in the present day. Of course, Albany Med has sprawled, and the foreground…

  • Familiar territory: Albany from the air, 1948

    Another view from the sky, courtesy of the New York State Archives’ Fairchild Aerial Surveys collection. Thanks to the presence of a number of notable landmarks, an awful lot of this view from June 2, 1948, looks just like Albany today. And a lot of it does not. Yeah, so that looks familiar. Front…

  • Veterans Administration Hospital

    Albany’s Veterans Administration Hospital is nearly complete in this aerial view from June 12, 1951, from the Fairchild Aerial Surveys collection of the New York State Archives. The new hospital rose on the site of the former Albany Penitentiary, which had moved twenty years before; when its buildings came down is not clear. The…

  • The Bayer Factory

    Again from the Fairchild Aerial Surveys collection of the New York State Archives. This time, a 1946 view of what is described as the Bayer Aspirin Factory, Riverside Avenue, Rensselaer. But what we’re actually looking at may be a little more complicated than that. A paper by Leander Ricard, posted at ColorantsHistory.org, gives the…