The ads of Edmund J. Peters, 1899-1900

I started noticing these cool little ads while researching period newspapers. My curiosity got the best of me, and I went looking for them all. Edmund…

Districts of Albany in 1882

Its ravines unfilled, streams uncovered, and hills unflattened, Albany in 1882 was still hugely defined by its topography. Most neighborhoods remained isolated from one another, each…

Place Names of Albany & Rensselaer Counties, 1914

The State Board of Geographic Names was established in 1913 as an attempt to standardize and codify the names of cities, towns, village, rivers, creeks in…

The Awakening – Albany’s first movie (a.k.a. “Move Over, Ironweed”)

In 1914, the fledgling movie “industry” wasn’t so much an industry as it was a motley bunch of entrepreneurs, visionaries, and scammers. What was clear, however,…

The Albany Turn Verein

In my online explorations, I came across an organization of which I’d never heard: The Albany Social Turn-Verein. TV IMAGE The turnverein was a German society…

A photo tour of industrial buildings, upper Broadway

I’ve always been fascinated with this little strip of industrial structures, mostly built, I believe in the early 1920’s, replacing residential buildings. They were primarily created…

Samuel Munson, The Munson Block, and Its Destruction for an Expanded Marketplace

Samuel Lyman Munson was born the 14th of June, 1844, of Puritan lineage; his forebear, Thomas Munson, was one of the founders of New Haven, Connecticut.…

ALBANY’S WWII HONOR ROLLS

Beginning in 1942, Service Clubs and Honor Roll Clubs began to pop up around the city, organized to do whatever they could for those boys in…

Hand-tinted engravings of winter in Albany

Scanned from the Pruyn Collection, Albany Public Library.  

Nemo Carnivals arrive in Albany

Albany hosts “Nemo Carnivals” in 1912 and 1914. I can find no references to a “Nemo Carnival” anywhere else in the country. I’d assume it had…