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Billy Funston? It’s a cinch!
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After the murder of Captain Youmans and the ouster of Chief Rynex in 1924, Schenectady needed a new police chief to establish order, crack down on vice and straighten up the police department. They turned to Billy Funston, a New York City detective who was well-known for being tough on crime and for escorting…
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Schenectady’s Vice District Defies Mayor
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Dec. 3, 1924: “Two young men, wearing plaid comforters, stumbled down Edison Avenue to-night. They brought up uncertainly before a two-storied frame house, the drawn blinds of which hid jolly red lights. One ventured into an unlighted area-way and presently beckoned his companion to follow. “Schenectady’s ‘gut’ reopened for business to-night, quietly, for the…
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The Killing of Capt. Youmans
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It’s “True Crime: Schenectady” Week on Hoxsie! From the Troy Sunday Budget, Nov. 30, 1924: “Acting Police Captain Albert L. Youmans of the Schenectady police force, who was shot down from ambush by an unknown assailant on Edison Avenue in that city early Friday evening, died yesterday afternoon at the Ellis Hospital as a…
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RPI admits women, 1942
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In honor of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s 207th commencement ceremony tomorrow, we’d like to note that it was 71 years ago that the institute determined that having ovaries would not necessarily preclude a person from understanding engineering and science. Today, that “limited number” of women students is as high as 29% of the student…
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Behold Henry Burden’s Horseshoe Machine
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Margaret Proudfit’s biography of her father, Henry Burden, gets downright giddy over the invention that made his fortune, the horseshoe machine: Watch this wonderful piece of mechanism at work which in a second of time makes a horseshoe. Before you are two strong frames between which are four revolving shafts geared together and getting…
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The Wonders of the Puddling Forge
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It’s not possible to leave the biography of Henry Burden without relating this wonderful passage, “The Wonders of the Puddling Forge,” which we daresay borders on some sort of gothic pornography: The chemical elements of pig-iron are such as to render it unfit for any serviceable use in these mills, and it therefore undergoes…
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What Burden’s works looked like
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So here’s an attempt to show just where the Troy Iron and Nail Factory and the rest of Burden’s burgeoning Upper Works were, which should give you an idea of just how much this tiny corner of Troy has changed and changed back — from wooded vale to center of industry to pleasant steep…
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The Immense Iron Mills of H. Burden & Sons
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As mentioned before, Henry Burden took charge of the Troy Iron and Nail Factory in 1822 when it was a smallish factory at the top of the Wynantskill in Troy, where Mill Street runs up the hill to Campbell Avenue today. “With more than ordinary foresight he caught glimpses of that future in which…
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