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Roosevelt and Byrd in Albany
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I’ve had these pictures of Governor Franklin Roosevelt and Rear Admiral Richard Byrd on the steps of the Capitol in Albany for the longest time, trying to figure out just what was going on. I finally found out, not from the pages of a local newspaper, but from a wire story that appeared in…
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A Roosevelt in Albany
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People are all a-twitter over the discovery that there were once Roosevelts (!) in Albany (!). Not having cable (and not even sure if I have broadcast), I haven’t seen the latest effort from Ken Burns, though I’m sure it’s excellent. He’s a good man, and thorough. Some time ago I set aside a…
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Colonel Roosevelt’s “flying trip” to Rensselaer County
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There’s some sort of hubbub about Roosevelts these days, so we may as well recall the time when Colonel Roosevelt, not yet Governor of the Empire State, made what the New York Tribune called “The Colonel’s Flying Trip to the Rensselaer County Fair,” in 1898. At that point flying was entirely metaphorical. Troy, N.Y.,…
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Downtown Schenectady, Then and (almost) Now
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An odd departure, but I always have a hard time remembering what little stores were where in the downtown Schenectady of my youth, and it’s harder now that this (fortunately preserved) section of State Street is being rehabbed. So, above, a lousy picture I took on a cold, dreary afternoon in 1978; below, a…
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What’s up in the publishing world, 1919
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Ran across an edition of “The American Printer” from August, 1919, which featured a series of short blurbs informative of what was going on with printers and publishers in New York State that summer. Among them: The Schenectady Union-Star has changed its mechanical equipment to print an eight column, 12½ em page, instead of…
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The Schenectady Massacre Sign
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I love this sign at the entrance to Schenectady at the Western Gateway Bridge. Love it so much. Because where else will you find a metal silhouette of a massacre? The sign itself should be a national landmark. It says, “Welcome to our city! People were once brutally murdered here!” The only thing this…
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Promoting Downtown
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It’s been some time now that newspapers have been trying to promote city downtowns, so perhaps it’s no surprise that the Schenectady Union-Star, before it abandoned Schenectady entirely, sponsored a big shopping promotion called “Suburban Day,” which they described as “A united endeavor on the part of the Union-Star and the leading retailers of…
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An old-time newspaperman
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While perusing old editions of Editor and Publisher, we came across this little reminder that in the old days, there tended to be two kinds of newspapermen: the ones who were lifers at a single publication, and the ones who worked all over the place. Here’s the obituary of one of the latter type…
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The dream of the 44-hour week
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In honor of Labor Day, let’s take a look back at this article from Editor and Publisher of Feb. 5, 1921, datelined Albany, in which the New York State Publishers’ Association, keepers of the possessive apostrophe, detail their reasoning for opposing the 44-hour week then being championed by the typographers and stereotypers. The president…
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The “new” Dunn Memorial Bridge
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Another oddly random pic from a family shoebox. We believe it’s from 1970, and the hideous and high new Dunn Memorial Bridge is nearly complete. The old Dunn is off to the right somewhere, waiting for a good blowing up, which would come a few months later, in 1971. The waterfront, as always, is…