The original Albany General Hospital building was completed in 1924. John Hammell was the masonry contractor for the building.

I don’t have any firm information regarding who took these photos, but since they are in the family archives, it seems as though there is a reasonable chance that Great-Grandpa Hammell took these to document his involvement in the project.

I imagine the men in the above photo were at least part of Great-Grandpa Hammell’s bricklaying crew for the hospital project

Here is the building after it was completed. (Apparently this was a professional photo sold as a commercial postcard, not a photo taken by Great-Grandpa Hammell. See comment.)

This photo seems devoid of people except the person standing at the top of the entry stairs. That person appears to be a young girl, though the photo is not clear enough even to be sure of that, let alone make identification.

Given the lack of other human activity and the fact that most of the windows appear to be open, my guess is that this photo was taken immediately after the building was completed (possibly things were still drying inside, or at least they were airing out the construction smells).

Seven years after this building was completed, Mom (Florence McClain) worked in it for a few years as a nurse. More about that in this post. I wonder whether she thought about the fact that she was working in a building her grandfather had built.

It is probably not a surprise that this building is no longer standing. The practice of medicine has changed radically since 1924, for one thing. The current Albany General Hospital building replaced the one pictured above on the same site in 1965.