-
Startling, But True!
•
Or, The Spring Talks For Itself! I haven’t previously run across the Lovell Manufacturing Company of 673 Broadway, but in 1886 they provided us with the startling (but true!) fact that “One third our lives we spend in bed (Chestnut).” Chestnut? In addition to roll-up spring beds whose springs talked for themselves, Lovell…
-
French toe, or London?
•
Joseph Fearey & Son was apparently the place to go for fine shoes in 1886, with three locations within the city of Albany: 156 South Pearl, 23 North Pearl, and 651 Broadway. Five dollars was a fair chunk of change in 1886.
-
Grandma Smith’s autograph book
•
Just about this time of year a brief 108 years ago, my great grandmother Hazel Cath went about to family and friends in West Glenville with a tiny autograph book and had them give her messages. I don’t know if there was some occasion, or if this was a custom at the time. This…
-
18th Century Starbucks?
•
If you Google the “Old Tontine Coffee House,” you’ll no doubt find the legendary location at Wall and Water Streets in New York City where the stock exchange is said to have been organized, and where later Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists hung out. It is believed to have opened in 1793. But there…
-
Nursing, napkin rings, and plain underclothing
•
The Albany Homeopathic Hospital, which provided not only homeopathic medical treatment but also served as a dispensary for the city’s poor, established a Training School for Nurses in 1903. Originally established on North Pearl Street in 1875 (roughly across from McGeary’s and Clinton Square), the hospital moved a bit further up Pearl Street in…
-
Adam Blake, hotelier
•
Many know the Kenmore hotel building as one of the handsomest structures on North Pearl Street, and local history afficionados probably associate it with Legs Diamond and the Prohibition-era novels of William Kennedy. Most probably don’t know that the legendary Kenmore, for decades one of Albany’s finest hotels, was built and operated by an…
-
Steam Soap
•
As we’ve mentioned before, once steam became a practical means of operating machinery, it was also the byword for everything modern and efficient (as electricity would be some decades later). We’ve written of steam typography, steam crackers, and now a steam soap and candle works. Clinton Ten Eyck was one of Albany’s venerable Ten…
-
Hollywood on the Hudson
•
Sure, there’s been a lot of excitement over films being shot in Albany and Schenectady in the past few years, but were any of those film sets deemed worthy of being preserved on a picture postcard? This one was published in 1987, depicting the filming of “Ironweed,” with the following legend on the obverse:…
Recent Posts
- Glen Sanders Manor (Not Mansion!)
- Polo Player Nabbed As Game Violator
- Amsterdam Heiress: Prisoner of the Nazis
