• Tragedy on the Mohawk

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    Carl Johnson

    One last look at long-gone Glenotia Park, and a tragedy that happened there on July 4, 1915. Adolph Held, owner of the Guarantee Bed Spring Company and the Guarantee Polishing and Plating Company, drowned in the river near the swimming school diving tower, right at the mouth of the Sanders inlet, which is right…

  • Boy Scouts at Glenotia Park

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    Carl Johnson

    People often ask why the papers don’t print the good things that happen in the community (or they did when they still read newspapers). Well, here we have an excellent example of the paper printing good news, and the story it tells is excruciatingly dull. From the July 3, 1915 Schenectady Gazette, a detailed…

  • Mohawk Swimming School, Glenotia Park

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    Carl Johnson

    News came this week that “Glenotia Island” is up for sale (for a mere $91,000). Growing up in Scotia, I never heard it called “Glenotia” — if anyone had a name for it, it was Isle of the Mohawks, and it appeared as such on maps of the time. Maps from around 1905 failed…

  • Albany Iron Railing Works

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    Carl Johnson

    Some of the grand old homes and buildings around Albany still have lovely ornamental rails and fences, and there’s a good chance many of them were made by Simeon Cunliff, Jr., of No. 20 Quay Street. In this ad from 1858, we have another great example of the rather humble proclamations of advertising of…

  • Fruit, Eggs, Poultry, Game, &C.

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    Carl Johnson

    Another advertisement from the 1858 Albany City Directory, this one for Johnson & Offenheiser at the bottom of State Street, where they dealt in foreign and domestic fruit, eggs, poultry, game and more. All consignments from the country promptly attended to. All organic and free-range, too, I believe.

  • Marble Pillar Restaurant

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    Carl Johnson

    From 1858, an ad for the Marble Pillar Restaurant, ironically using a typeface meant to resemble wooden logs, not marble. “This old and popular House has recently undergone thorough repairs; new Furniture has been added, and the modern improvements introduced, so necessary to the comfort of the traveling public. Having had many years experience…

  • Solomon Southwick

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    Carl Johnson

    Ignatius Jones’s “Random Recollections of Albany” included strong and yet confusing praise for a figure I hadn’t heard of before, one Solomon Southwick. Southwick was born into a Newport, Rhode Island publishing family, but circumstances led him to serve on fishing boats before apprenticing to a New York City printer. As a journeyman in…

  • Even the dogs were Dutch

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    Carl Johnson

    English: An etching of Dutch-style rowhouses in Albany, New York, United States (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Continuing with Ignatius Jones’s 1850 recollections of Albany before it had grown into a mid-19th century megalopolis, or at least one of the principal cities of commerce in the expanding nation. When Jones first came to Albany in 1800,…

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