Tag: Albany

Jazz Age Adventurers: Fashion Edition

At the Albany Institute of History and Art: Fashionable Frocks of the 1920s showcases the adventurous dresses of the Jazz Age.

Silk Evening Coat, 1929.
Quintessential flapper dress in silk and rayon exemplified the “relaxed morals” of the decade.
Chiffon “Bab” dress, c. 1925, Paris.
If you couldn’t afford a Paris original, Montgomery Wards and other department stores provided fashionable alternatives.

Featured image: Silk dress with flower, worn by former Girl Driver of Hospital Truck, D.T.A. Cogswell.

Albany Rural Cemetery

Founded in 1844, the Albany Rural Cemetery is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. I don’t normally seek out cemeteries, but this is the second major rural cemetery I’ve visited in the last month or so.

President Chester Arthur is the most famous resident. New Jersey governor and U.S. Supreme Court justice William Paterson (namesake of the university in New Jersey) is also buried here.

Albany Rural Cemetery, Menands, New York.

Tomb of President Chester A. Arthur. Arthur benefited from political patronage and machine politics, but when he became president after the assassination of James Garfield, he threw his support behind the civil service reform movement. The 1883 Pendleton Act would lead to civil service jobs being awarded based on merit, not personal connections.


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