Dancing Beak-To-Beak

Pairs of carved birds decorate the gorgeous First Presbyterian Church overlooking Washington Park at the corner of State and Willett Streets. Built in 1882, the church is also home to four beautiful Tiffany windows.

The Pruyn Building

Located at 70 North Pearl Street (adjacent to the well-known Kenmore Hotel), the Pruyn Building is one of my favorite buildings in downtown Albany.

Built as a commercial building with apartments above two storefronts by Robert Hewson Pruyn (who served as the U.S. minister to Japan during Abraham Lincoln's presidency), the gorgeous Queen Anne building was designed by architects William A. Potter and Robert H. Robertson (they also design another Pruyn's residence on Willett Street).

This lovely cast iron ornament is one of a pair flanking the surviving storefront. A terra cotta plaque above it dates the building to 1879.

Fancy Work

This doorway of this old brick town house on lower Clinton Avenue is crowned with an elegant cast iron lintel which, for the longest time, I mistook for carved stone.

Central Avenue Whimsy

This brownstone on Central Avenue hasn't aged well. The facade is blackened with pollution and scarred with remnants of poorly cleaned graffiti. But it retains some eye-catching details like this whimsical carved figure.

Gothic Remnant

Very little is left of this once-ornate cast iron railing on Clinton Avenue just up from North Pearl Street.

A Faded Ghost Sign

While loitering for a moment near Capital Rep, I noticed a ghost sign - faded to almost complete illegibility - on the north wall of the old Harry Simmons building.

Rail History In Pine Hills

This marker, identifying the spot where the first chartered railroad in New York State began its debut trip from Albany to Schenectady, stands on the point where Western Avenue (seen above) converges with Madison Avenue in Pine Hills. The company was chartered in 1825 and the first train - yellow passenger cars drawn by the famous DeWitt Clinton steam locomotive - departed from Albany near this intersection on September 24, 1831. The sixteen-mile trip through the Pine Bush took about forty minutes.