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Corner of Madison and New Scotland

Here's the undated original in the APL's "Residential Albany" collection at New York Heritage.

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Corner of Washington and Lark

Here's the 1917 original in the APL's "Residential Albany" collection at New York Heritage. That street-level space was a bank space back then, too -- it was the "Park Branch" of the Union Trust Co.

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Corner of State and Swan

Here's the undated original in the APL's "Commercial Streets" collection at New York Heritage. This photo had to be taken sometime after 1926 -- that's the year the Fort Frederick Apartments building was moved across State Street to make room for the Smith Building. The Fort Frederick had started out at Swan and Washington.

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Broadway, just north of State Street

Here's the original in the APL's "Commercial Streets" collection at New York Heritage -- it's dated 1930-32. Construction of the federal court building that now stands along Broadway just north of what's now the SUNY Admin building started in 1932.

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Albany, sliding between past and present

posted Dec 21, 2015
Madison and New Scotland old ice cream parlor past present split

It's fun to look at old photos from around the Capital Region and match them up with the present-day site to see what's changed -- and what hasn't.

So here are a handful of "sliding" past and present photos from a few spots around Albany...

Photos are above in large format -- click or scroll all the way up.

The historical photos are from the Albany Public Library's online collection at the New York Heritage site, which allows you to zoom in very close to see additional detail in the photos.

A few quick things

+ In some ways it's remarkable how much hasn't changed. Some of these buildings still have roughly the same use now as they did back then. And even some little things are still the same -- like the cars parked in almost the exact same spots almost a century apart.

+ If our count is correct, that last window along the side of the bank building at Washington and Lark was added during an expansion sometime after the "then" photo was taken. That's kind of remarkable to us because we would have never guessed that just from looking at it.

+ We really wish there that building at Madison and New Scotland was still an ice cream parlor.

Earlier on AOA
+ 1938/2015 dissolve
+ Albany: Then and Now app

1 comment
tags: Albany, featured, history

Comments

I looked at the large format photos before reading your comments and had very similar thoughts. It is amazing how much the architecture has stayed the same and I wish there was still an ice cream parlor at that location.

This post made me miss Albany a lot. Hello from Albania (the country not the city)!

... said Lauren on Dec 22, 2015 at 10:50 AM | link

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