As I’ve ranted before, banks were once truly the backbone of the community, and every growing city was proud of its lending institutions. They regularly reported their assets and how much they had invested in the community. In 1844, the busy city of Albany had eight banks, all conveniently located in pretty much the…

The Albany Medical College was chartered Feb. 16, 1839; “the charter empowers the trustees to confer the degree of doctor of medicine on the recommendation of the faculty, and three of the curators. The college edifice which is of brick, three stories high, 120 feet front by 50 feet deep, belongs with its grounds,…

Another of the gems that is no longer there, the Albany Female Academy was on North Pearl Street. According to Wilson’s Albany City Guide, “This beautiful and classic edifice was erected for the purposes of a Female Academy in the year 1834, and is one of the greatest ornaments of our city . .…

The copy in Wilson’s Albany City Guide of 1844 says: “For richness and extensive variety of novelties, combining the Beautiful, the Useful and the Ornamental, this establishment excels any in town. Mr. P. has many fancy articles which are surpassingly rich; exceeding anything in elegance, that we have ever thought, dreamed or read of.…

Albany was always a river city. In 1844, the city itself still didn’t stray too far west of the river, and the movement of people and goods up and down the Hudson, not to mention the vital connection to the Erie Canal, was what made Albany one of the most important cities in the…

Or “bonnetter?” Either way. In 1844, Barnum Blake made bonnets, Florence straw and silk and velvet bonnets. He had French and American artificial flowers, ribbons, etc. He was located nearly opposite the new Delavan House hotel and the Eastern and Western railroad depots (for a “union” station was still a long way off). I’m…

I wrote extensively about the Albany piano industry just a little over a year ago at All Over Albany. For a time, our nickname could have been The Piano City. Here is an 1844 advertisement from the Albany City Guide from the biggest piano maker, Boardman & Gray. Love the old ad copy: “The…

“Cheap” tends to have a pejorative connotation these days that it did not in 1844, when Erastus H. Pease was happy to let Albanians know that his book store dealt in cheap publications. But he also dealt in classical and school texts, maps and globes, blank books, paper and stationery of all kinds, and…