During World War II cities, towns and villages put up “honor rolls ” for those who were serving.
But sometimes it fell to just regular people. In Charlie and Joe’s Barbershop on Broadway in North Albany there was a home grown “wall of honor”.
North Albany was known as Little Limerick. It was a close knit, tight community of mostly working-class Irish families who settled in the area in the mid to late 1800s to work in the breweries, lumber yards and factories in the area. It was a world unto itself- part of Albany, but it had its own identity
By World War II many families were 6th generation proud Americans, who had succeeded and thrived, and overcome the discrimination, prejudice and abject poverty they first experienced in America.
We don’t know who put up the first photo, but it took off. Everyone came into the barbershop, and brought a photo of their son, daughter, brother, sister, father, uncle, niece or nephew in service to display.
Best “honor roll” ever.
We’ve also included a photo of members of the American Legion Post in North Albany in the 1970s. It includes men whose photos were on the bulletin board.
Thanks to Thomas Duclos, retired Assistant Curator of the New York Military Museum and David Barrows, both from North Albany.
At the turn of the 20th century American cities were crowded unsanitary and unhealthful places. They were grappling with issues caused by dense urbanization and industrialization.
Albany was no exception. Social reformers (mostly wealthy women – think Eleanor Roosevelt) set out to make changes. In Albany one of those was a Mary Vanderpoel Hun, the wife of the wealthy financier and magnate Marcus Hun. She was one of the leading lights of the social reform movement in the city. As a member of St. Peter’s Church she one of the forces behind the philanthropic funding of the Albany’s only settlement house, Trinity Institution, for immigrants. She was active in a variety of other programs and social reforms. (In her later years she would be one of the founders of the American Foundation for the Blind.)
But in
the first decade of the 1900s her eye was fixed on poor housing
conditions in Albany. There was a shortage of moderate priced decent
housing, and often people were crammed cheek to jowl in tenements with
no electricity, inadequate heat and no bathrooms. But many in the city
were oblivious to the horrendous conditions, so Mrs. Hun took a number
of the rich and powerful men on a tour of Albany’s slums, and the
Chamber of Commerce got involved.
Grange Sard (one of the richest and most powerful men in the city and president of Ransome, Sard and Co.,, (manufacturer of Acorn stoves, wildly popular and sold across the country) decided to do something. Around 1911 he incorporated a group of like-minded local men with deep pockets to create the Albany Homebuilding Co. They purchased a large tract of land in the town of Bethlehem just on the city line, on Whitehall Rd., west of Delaware Ave., that had once been part of the Ten Eyck Farm. Another smaller tract was purchased in North Albany (it’s called Lawn Ave. today), near North Pearl St. Both areas were located close to trolley lines (the fare at that time was a nickel).
The company’s purpose was to construct “modern, sanitary dwellings in locations away from crowded streets and at the same time within easy access of the business sections of the city. The company has foremost in its mind the idea of housing families in clean and airy houses with the best possible environments, believing that good homes mean good citizens.” It saw its efforts as of great civic importance, as well because “the man who owns his own home is a more interested citizen” and “homes were needed to improve the condition of working men and their families”.
This was a new approach to home building for working men and their families. There had been residences constructed by some factories for their workers, and developers had focused on building houses in proximity to the West Albany Stockyards and the New York Central railroad shops, but nothing had been built with the intent of providing housing for the “everyman”, regardless of where he worked.
The company was capitalized with $100,000 and shareholder return on investment was limited to an annual 5%.
By 1914, 24 two and one family detached houses on Lawn Ave. had been constructed, sidewalks poured, trees planted and the street paved. There were 39 single family homes in Whitehall Park, on Whitehall Rd. and what would become Sard and McDonald Roads (William McDonald, a wealthy banker was VP of the Company). All houses had gas, electricity and hardwood floors, a bathroom and a cellar.
“The company has
arranged its selling scheme so that the man whose ready resources are
limited stands on an equal footing with man who has more”. The property
could be purchased on an installment plan, through payment of rent.
(The availability of mortgages as we know them today wasn’t a really
thing in the early 1900s.) The down payment was less than $100 and a
modest monthly rent was charged that was applicable towards the
purchase price of the home. The company paid for water, taxes, insurance
and repairs. When the renter was ready to purchase, those costs would
be included in the purchase price. After 40% of the purchase price had
been paid through the rental process he would be given the deed, and a
mortgage arranged with a local savings bank for the remaining 60 %. The
goal was to permit the buyer to own the home outright within a decade or
so.
Yet these were social reformers – do-gooders, so before a house could be sold or rented the good “character and the integrity” of the applicant has to be established, including references.
But the developments were successful. The houses cost between $1,900 to $3,400. (At the time the average wage was about $550- $600/per year and a dozen eggs cost about a quarter.) There were many styles -2 story, bungalows and cottages – and sizes to fit individual family needs. The supervising architect was Addison Worthington from Michigan, whose work had been featured in a number of trade journals as well as “American Home and Garden”; he specialized in a style I would call the lower cost cozy cottage. Lot frontage ranged from 27’ x 35 with a depth from 85’ x 100’ and setbacks of a minimum of 20 ft., trees and cement sidewalks.
The goal was to allow men to “bring up their families where they can have the advantages of light and air, keeping the facilities and comfort of the cities.”
The company had plans to expand to other areas, but it wasn’t necessary. Whitehall Park generated an explosion of construction of modest homes and bungalows in the neighborhood. The area was annexed by the city and by 1921 Public School 23 (now ASH) was built (it was for years, the jewel in the Albany school district crown), which triggered even more development.
The south side of Whitehall Rd., part of the old Ten Eyck Farm, sold off rapidly. Much of the north side was owned by land speculator James Weaver who died in 1914, and after lengthy legal wrangling, those lots started to sell around 1918. Some developers were merely land speculators, selling lots, while other were home builders. They created the first real subdivisions in the city. The area around Rose Ct. was called Ideal Heights.
The trolley line was not extended to Whitehall Rd.,
although a bus line was approved in the early 1920s. But by 1917 Henry
Ford was selling over ½ million Model T cars a year, at a price of $345.
The developers in Whitehall Park made room for garages.
The
demand for housing in this area of the city countinued for another 30
years or so. My 30 something grandparents purchased their land on
Holmes Ct. (on the other side of School 23) at a fire sale price just as
the Depression was reaching a peak in 1931, but didn’t build until
1937. But throughout the Depression years of the 1930s houses continued
to sell in the Whitehall Rd. area and banks gave the area a good rating
when granting mortgages.
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