ALBANY — A crew from the same company that originally made the 90-year-old sign for Lombardo’s Restaurant on lower Madison Avenue removed it Saturday morning to recreate the sign with a similar look but to reflect the building’s renovation for the second location of Hattie’s Restaurant, which opened in Saratoga Springs five years after the Lombardo’s sign went up.
A debut for the Albany Hattie’s is expected in late fall. The purchase of the 9,500-square-foot building at 121 Madison Ave. by the Saratoga Springs-based Business for Good foundation was first announced two years ago. As part of its mission, Business for Good has brought Hattie’s and several other food businesses under its wing, turning them into nonprofits that offer employees higher pay and health insurance and put proceeds back into the community.
As in Saratoga, Hattie’s-Albany will be run by Beth and Jasper Alexander, a married couple who owned it from 2001 to 2021 and continue in their supervisory management roles for Hattie’s and its quick-serve sibling in Wilton, Hattie’s Chicken Shack. Veteran area kitchen leader Mark D. Graham will be executive chef of Hattie’s in Albany.
Hattie’s is keeping and restoring much of the expansive interior, including a large booth in a back corner, but 11 single- and double-sided booths were donated to Historic Albany Foundation and removed to its warehouse in January. According to a Historic Albany representative, one booth was given to a former Lombardo’s server, another to a member of the Mancino family, which bought the restaurant in 1991 from the founding family and owned it until the closure at the end of 2018. The remaining booths were sold within days, Historic Albany said.
Charles N. Lombardo Sr. opened the eponymous Italian restaurant in 1919, expanding it with the addition of the barroom next door when Prohibition was repealed in 1933. That year, Lombardo commissioned an artist, who…
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