Soda Sign

A faded sign for 7-Up on the side of a former grocery store along Madison Avenue east of the Empire State Plaza.

The Old Mission

This 19th-century building stands across Hudson Avenue from the Post Office and just around the corner from the Times Union Center (sometimes, I almost still call it the Knickerbocker Arena).

For a long time, 50 Hudson Avenue housed the Capital City Rescue Mission, one of the area's leading homeless shelters. The Mission has long since moved to a more modern facility on South Pearl Street.

Before becoming the City Mission in the 1950s, this building was home to a succession of seedy establishments including a Chinese laundry, a grocery store, an opium den, a brothel, and a tavern patronized by notorious gangster Legs Diamond during Prohibition.

In 1987, a cache of morphine vials (labeled morfina in Spanish) was found packed into a suitcase wrapped in a burlap potato sack and stashed in a high crawlspace here. The brown leather suitcase, filled with wax-sealed amber vials was discovered above the third floor during roof repairs. Authorities were able to date the find by newspapers concealing the vials...the drugs were tucked away, probably by a dealer, in 1921. Just who owned the illicit bottles and why he (or she) never returned for the suitcase is just another mystery...

The Ghost Window

Look closely and you just might see it...the faint outline of a round window on the north wall of Coulson's News on Broadway.

As I wrote in a previous blog, this building just a few steps south of State Street was built around 1814 as a four-story brick commercial building. In the 1850s, another story was added, but if you look closely at the north side, you can still see the outlines of the original gabled roof and, up near the point of the old gable, the circular outline of an old window, too.

Early Dandelions

I know that most people consider them weeds or worse, but I like dandelions. They're like tiny suns with their bright bursts of yellow petals. The young dandelion leaves can be quite tasty and very healthy, plus the plants figure in herbal medicine.

I spotted the first dandelions of the season on Elberon Place, just across the street from the Washington Park Lake where I'd been watching ducks bob on the water. Early, but not the earliest I've seen...two years ago, I found dandelions growing near Stuyvesant Plaza in January!

Pink and Green

Pink is not my favorite color, least of all for buildings. But, personal taste aside, I do like this 19th-century building along the section of Broadway known as Plaza Row. It stands just south of Coulson's News, the Albany Argus, and an old book store previously featured here.

This stretch of Broadway opposite the ornate Gothic sprawl of the D&H Building is one of the oldest parts of Albany with buildings - or portions of them, at least - dating back as far the 18th-century. The colonial-era Stadt Huys or City Hall stood almost directly across from this building pictured above. Just around the corner on Hudson Avenue, hidden behind a later facade, are the remains of what is now believed to be the oldest house in Albany (and that will be the subject of at least one future post, either here or at my companion blog, Albany NY History).

Community Gardens

March is sign-up season for the area's Community Garden program. I have my own backyard (which looks more than a little messy at the moment) so I've never taken part in this wonderful program which provides residents with plots in a number of urban gardens throughout Albany, Troy, and Schenectady. It's a great chance for people who do not have garden space of their own to get outside, enjoying working with the earth, and raise fresh vegetables.

This garden is the Charles Shoudy Memorial Garden on Swan Street, just steps away from the lamentably defunct nature trail through Lincoln Park's Beaverkill gully (see my previous posts about that favorite spot of mine) and was taken at the end of last year's growing season.

For more information on the Community Gardens and to sign up for a plot, see their site:

www.cdcg.org

More coffee, please

The Stagecoach Coffee on State Street Hill just above Pearl Strees has one of the coolest signs in downtown Albany. And good coffee, too.