The Fire Record, 1887
Fire was recently in the news for taking a terrible toll on a city with the unthinkable destruction of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. But it was a loss […]
The Lorraine Block and a little more Stanford history
Once upon a time, the construction of a new office building really meant something – it was a point of pride for a community to know that a modern structure […]
The ‘Other’ Max Shinburn, Jail House Dog
Max Shinburn’s legend lived on in Albany, or at least in the Albany jail – in the form of a jailhouse dog, owned by Jake Fulder, which went by the […]
‘Count’ Max Shinburn, King of the Bank Burglars
We’ve written before about some of the prisoners of the Albany County Penitentiary, a rather legendary lockup. But the old city jail, on Maiden Lane just behind City Hall, “hosted” […]
An Albany Bride In the Soup
We present this particular story in the spirit of Ripley’s “Believe It or Not,” at least in this sense: This appeared in the Albany Morning Express on July 22, 1895, […]
The High Schools of Scotia
A while back in a Facebook group, someone commented on this old postcard of the original Scotia High School, which opened in 1905 on First Street, just about across from […]
The Last of the Albany Piano Pieces!
We wanted to finish up our survey of Albany piano makers. We covered John and Horace Meacham, Francis P. Burns, Marshall and Wendell, McCammon, and of course Boardman and Gray. […]
Piano Wars — The Strange Story of McCammon Pianos
Did ya think we were done with the Albany piano makers? Not quite. For one thing, there were quite a lot more – various offshoots and apprentices going off on […]
Boardman and Gray, Albany’s Premiere Piano Builder
We’ve already talked about a number of Albany piano makers (Marshall and Wendell, Francis P. Burns, John and Horace Meacham), and there are a number of others hardly worth mentioning. […]
Marshall and Wendell Pianos
When we talk about long-standing Albany piano makers, the name of Boardman and Gray comes up the most frequently. But there was another piano maker that lasted for about a […]