Gone The Way of The Buggy Whip

This shabby brick building on Spruce Street just of Sheridan Avenue is certainly a relic of a different era. The painted sign on the east facade announces the availability of horses for sale or exchange. It recalls a time when horses and the vehicles they drew were still the primary way to travel or move goods around the city and when parts of this area above Sheridan Hollow were used for stables for the elegant houses on Elk Street and Washington Avenue above.

A couple of wealthy 19th-century families even pastured cows for fresh milk here.

The horse business in Albany has gone the way of the proverbial buggy whip, of course, but there are visible remnants of it here and there. In some downtown neighborhoods, carriage houses have been renovated into modern dwellings, but still retains original features such as the beams used to hoist hay bales into lofts.