The huge storm that hit two days ago pretty much missed NYC. We got a day of heavy rain followed by a day and a half of very cold weather, but realistically it wasn’t that bad here. It especially wasn’t that bad compared to how the storm affected other areas, including upstate New York.
However, the combination of bad weather and thinking about upstate made me nostalgic for my four years at school in Troy. Since I only rarely caught a ride with friends, I was on foot most of the time, which meant that I explored downtown Troy pretty thoroughly. The building above, the old Rensselaer Hotel, is one of the larger old buildings downtown and has a prominent location at at River and First Streets. It was eight years old when Ms. Leslie sent that postcard; it’s still there 110 years later, converted to apartment use.
Google tells me that it has a steel frame, which, if true, probably makes it among the first skeleton-frame buildings in the city. The high-resolution photo that the postcard was made from gives a sense of the detail of the facade:
Presumably the men’s entrance to the grille room was from the hotel lobby:
Also, note the subdivided upper portion of each window: 24 small panes of glass was an expensive way to make an architectural statement. In other words, this was a hotel of some pretension.
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