"When Governor Al Smith lived in the Executive Mansion, he had a petting zoo in the backyard that had several animals at one point including seven dogs, one elk, three bears, four raccoons, one possum, four monkeys, one goat, one donkey, two ponies, rabbits, barn owls, and pheasants."
I was curious about the old New York Central Rail Grade that they at one point proposed extending Interstate 690 East to Oran along NY 92, and was able to find it on these old topographic maps from 1943. Certainly would have eased congestion a lot in Fayetteville, but probably not popular in Fayetteville or Manlius -- and probably would have encouraged a lot more sprawl around Cazenovia.
I was playing around with the NYS GIS / Tax Map Feature Service, and realized it was pretty easy to query any building that was built in the state prior to 1820. The trick is keep the query narrow enough so you don't request too many points -- the feature server is limited to something like 1,000 points per request, although your browser will crash before then.
Coal isn't particularly popular but it's a fairly common heating fuel in the Southern Tier of New York. Data Source: NY Tax Parcel Center Points. https://gisservices.its.ny.gov/arcgis/rest/services/NYS_Tax_Parcel_Centroid_Points/MapServer/0, query FUEL_TYPE_DESC='Coal'.
Jetting out into Kueka Lake.
This shows the Empire State Plaza Area in 1952.
Downtown Albany, NY, 1952
Uploaded by Richard Welty. (In 1 layer) Depicts: 1952 Last modified about 1 year ago. 8 control points.
Data Source: Map Warper. https://mapwarper.net/maps/44094