The date for #Feast 2023 is confirmed! Write it in your diary and calendar - we have already been working on making this event as unique and fun as ever! We will host the party in the NYS Museum and will be sending out invitations to join the honor committee within the next few weeks. Thank you for your support!

Last Day to Preorder your #ThisisNotaDrill Shirt 

Going, Going, Gone!

Look like the coolest DIYer/Preservationist around by sporting our #AlbanyToolLibrary shirts! Send your size(s) via email using the button below and pay on delivery. All proceeds go to support the library.

Shirts are unisex, are 100% cotton and come in S/M/L/XL 

One shirt $20 / Two for $35

I want a Shirt!

'Crazy Ladies of Pearl Street' Book Club - Late Feb

You still have time to join this year's virtual Book Club, held in partnership with the NYS Writers Institute. For 2023 we will be reading 'The Crazy Ladies of Pearl Street'. Borrow from Albany Public Library here.

"Six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his little sister, and his spirited but vulnerable young mother have been abandoned—again—by his father, a charming con artist. With no money and nowhere else to go, the LaPointes create a fragile nest in a tenement building at 238 North Pearl Street in Albany, New York.

For the next eight years, through the Great Depression and Second World War, they live in the heart of the Irish slum, surrounded by ward heelers, unemployment, and grinding poverty. Pearl Street is also home to a variety of “crazyladies”: Miss Cox, the feared and ridiculed teacher who ignites Jean-Luc’s imagination; Mrs. Kane, who runs a beauty parlor/fortune-telling salon in the back of her husband’s grocery store; Mrs. Meehan, the desperate, harried matriarch of a thuggish family across the street; lonely Mrs. McGivney, who spends every day tending to her catatonic husband, a veteran of the Great War; and Jean-Luc’s own unconventional, vivacious mother. Colorful though it is, Jean-Luc never stops dreaming of a way out of the slum, and his mother’s impossible expectations are both his driving force and his burden.

As legendary writer Trevanian lovingly re-creates the neighborhood of his youth in this funny, deeply moving coming-of-age novel, he also paints a vivid portrait of a neighborhood, a city, a nation in turmoil, and the people waiting for a better life to begin. It’s a heartfelt and unforgettable look back at one child’s life in the 1930s and ’40s, a story that will be remembered long after the last page is turned..."

Click Here to View the More Information About Historic Albany Foundation Weekly Newsletter - January 13, 2023