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How the Livingston Avenue Bridge Changed Everything
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The Hudson River Bridge Company built the first structure to cross the Hudson at Albany. When it opened in 1866, it was simply the Hudson River Bridge. Once the Maiden Lane Bridge opened at the end of 1871, the older bridge was often called the North Bridge. Eventually, it picked up the moniker of…
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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Livingston Avenue Bridge
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The New York State Engineer and Surveyor’s report from 1864 contains an extensive history of The Hudson River Bridge Company, the operation that built Albany’s iconic Livingston Avenue Bridge. The report contains a huge amount of detail, some of which we’re reproducing here because a huge amount of detail on these old structures is…
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The Dudley Observatory Moves Next to the Almshouse
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After a shaky start, the Dudley Observatory got up and running and in fact became a fairly important observatory in the latter part of the 19th century, one of Albany’s many claims to scientific fame. However, after a few decades, it appears that the site on Dudley Heights proved less than satisfactory. The precise…
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The Dudley Observatory Buys Shutters and A Computer
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In the middle of the 19th century, the highly respected scientific advisor to Albany’s nascent observatory went on a spending spree of epic proportions. Even in Albany, rarely has so much been spent for so little result. That even some of what was purchased was eventually actually acquired and put into use should be…
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The Observatory’s New Clothes
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So as we noted previously, the original Dudley Observatory, located on Dudley Heights in Arbor Hill in Albany, was created in a fit of local scientific boosterism that took advantage of the fact that Blandina Dudley had wads of her deceased husband’s cash, a wish to have him memorialized, and apparently couldn’t say no…
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The Floor Plan of the Dudley Observatory
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The Annals of the Dudley Observatory, Vol. I, published by Weed, Parsons in 1866, provides a handy ground plan of Blandina Dudley’s dream observatory, which was formally inaugurated in 1856. The space marked a was the front entrance and piazza. Immediately inside, b, was the base of the equatorial pier, essentially the permanent mounting…
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Mrs. Dudley Builds an Observatory
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Most folks in Albany are probably at least familiar with the name of the Dudley Observatory. Those who still remember when it was in Albany remember its second location, on South Lake Avenue, but that was not its premiere location — it was originally set high up in Arbor Hill in a place still…
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Phoenixville Phriday: Phoenixville Knits!
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We know much about the history of iron and steel in Phoenixville – it was the Phoenix Iron Works that gave the borough its name, after all (prior to incorporation in 1849, the village was known as Manavon). But there was also a significant textile industry, including a number of knitting mills, which are…
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Albany’s Public Bath No. 1
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Municipal Journal and Engineer from July 1902 featured a thorough overview of Albany’s first public bath, Public Bath No. 1, located at 665 Broadway (smack in the middle of the east side of the block between Orange and Quackenbush), hailing a public bath as a “step in the interest of public morals, clean living…
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Police Battle Maniac on Smith’s Special
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In his Nov. 4, 1950 column in the Knickerbocker News, Charles L. Mooney recounted days of long ago – Oct. 21, 1928, to be exact, and in doing so gave us a peek into the working of political campaigns, railroads, police work and the press, back in the days when the Knick Press was…