• Price & Weatherhead

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    Carl Johnson

    This billhead from The Biggert Collection is from the first year of operation of Price & Weatherhead, dealers in brandies, wines, cigars, ale and porter. Not to mention family groceries, fine teas, java coffee, oliv oil, foreign pickles, sauces, preserved fruits, and Mumm and Heidsick champagnes. Constantly on hand! According to Howell’s “Bi-Centennial History…

  • Pioneer Broom got a new letterhead!

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    Carl Johnson

    Just a year later than the letterhead we saw yesterday, Amsterdam’s Pioneer Broom Company had a fabulous new letterhead made up for 1917, with crisp new cuts, elaborate typography, and P.B.Co Inc. logo. The letterhead (from the Biggert Collection) may have changed, but the subject had not. Rockwell Gardiner still wasn’t so good at…

  • Pioneer Broom

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    Carl Johnson

    The Schenectady area was once the broom corn capital of the country, back when the low-lying farms west of the city and in Scotia and Reeseville provided the raw materials for a highly necessary product. Out in Amsterdam, the Blood Brothers started up the city’s broom industry in the 1860s. Pioneer Broom Company was…

  • Ludlow Valve

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    Carl Johnson

    Another beautiful letterhead from the Biggert Collection, this one from the Ludlow Valve Manufacturing Co. of Troy. The Biggert Collection actually has three pieces of correspondence between Jason H. Caldwell, Vice President of Ludlow Valve, and Mr. Eugene Carroll, Superintendent of the Butte Water Company of Butte, Montana.  Ordering pipe and valves by correspondence…

  • Letters from Keeler’s

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    Carl Johnson

    Yesterday Hoxsie got so wrapped up in Keeler’s story of ice and fire that I didn’t get to focus on the letterhead from the Biggert Collection. This letter on hotel stationery from 1901 sends Friend Hatcher some directions: “I get to write you today to say that I will not be at home until…

  • Keeler’s Hotel

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    Carl Johnson

    For a long time, Keeler’s was the hotel in Albany, even among other highly respected establishments such as The Kenmore and The Ten Eyck. As Dr. William Henry Johnson wrote in 1900, “Keeler’s Hotel, corner Broadway and Maiden lane, is one of the finest hotels in the State, complete in every particular.” Keeler’s was…

  • Julius Saul, clothier of Troy

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    Carl Johnson

    The Biggert Collection has preserved this custom commercial envelope from the firm of Julius Saul, depicting his building at 326 River Street in Troy (probably the Atrium parking garage today). Saul was born in Posen, a province of Prussia around 1835 and came to America in his youth. He opened stores in Hudson and…

  • John G. Myers

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    Carl Johnson

    John G. Myers’s dry goods store was one of the long-time anchors of the North Pearl Street shopping district in downtown Albany. The store was founded in 1870 and was rivaled only by Whitney’s. Today it’s probably best remembered for its terrible collapse in 1905, which killed at least 13 people. The store was…

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