All Over Albany

Ice cream, A VALUABLE FOOD

It was a different time. One with ice cream potatoes.

This ad is via the Albany Group historical image archive on Flickr. The Albany Muskrat highlighted it today on Twitter, along with pics of some of the ice cream forms.

The factory for the Albany Ice Cream Company -- "Wholesale and Retail Manufacturers of Plain and Fancy Creams and Ices" -- was located on Pleasant Street in North Albany. (There was that time that the Albany Ice Cream Company realized that -- gasp -- women could work in that factory.)

It also had an important message for its customers of the late 1910s.

From a 1918 ad in the Corning Evening Leader:

In these days when patriotic Americans are abstaining from a large proportion of their customary sweets in order that those with more need of them may have their share, it is gratifying to learn that United State Food Administration is explaining to housewives that ICE CREAM IS NOT A LUXURY, as many have always considered it to be, but a VALUABLE FOOD which may be partaken of generously.

We can get on board with that.

The ad also offered a money back guarantee on its bricks of ice cream.

Further efforts by the company to make the case for its product, from a 1914 issue of The Rotarian, reporting from the Albany branch of the fraternal org:

Mr. [Irving] Walker [of the Albany Ice Cream Company] claims to manufacture the best cold product in the country, and to convince the Albany Rotarians at the luncheon had ice cream in the form of battleships placed before each member for dessert. All pronounced it the best except for the patriarch who got a paraffine battleship -- that was a case of trying to get even for the roasting Mr. Walker go in "Who's Who," a booklet that was sprung on the members at the luncheon November 14th.

That Irv, such a joker.