The family was descended from Andrew Albright, a gunsmith who supplied arms to the troops of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, who had come to America in 1750.

[2] While in Washington, Albright started an asphalt business with his brother-in-law, Amzi L. Barber (who had married his wife's sister, Julia Louise Langdon).

While there, he entered into partnership with Thomas Guilford Smith, another Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduate and Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company executive.

Green to design the Ontario Power Company buildings, Murray Street at Buchanan Avenue, including the Entrance Pavilion, Spillway Building, Office and Transformer Station, Gate House, Screen House, and Ontario Power Company Generating Stationat river level.

[11] The conduits, two steel and one wooden (bound with iron hoops and encased in concrete), ran underground 6,180 ft (1,884 m) to the top of the generating station.

At the point where the conduits and the penstocks join, a section turned upwards into a spillway, called a surge tank, which served to reduce fluctuations in heat and pressure during both the increase and decrease of loads.

The open spillways sent any excess water to the Niagara River if the load suddenly reduced, which prevented any unwanted rise in pressure.

Stephen M. Clement, (president of Marine Bank), succeeded Joseph G. Robin on the board of syndicate managers for the underwriting of the company's securities.

It had branch lines running to West Seneca, Batavia, Caledonia, Avon, Auburn, and Baldwinsville near Syracuse.

[18] Lackawanna Company executives reached out to Buffalo attorney John G. Milburn, who brought in Albright, who had been discussing organizing a steel plant in Buffalo with William A. Rogers (vice president of Rogers, Brown & Company, the largest pig iron dealer in the United States).

In March 1899, the company's executives met with Albright, Milburn, and Rogers (Hayes was in Jekyll Island at the time, but returned April 1) in Buffalo and explored several sites, ultimately choosing the undeveloped shoreline on Lake Erie in what was then the western part of the town of West Seneca, New York.

Albright began purchasing land on April 1, 1899, and by the end of the month had obtained nearly all the required property for a price of $1,095,430.98 (equivalent to $40,119,000 in 2023).

In 1896, the Depew Improvement Company built a brick building at the corner of Transit and Ellicott (now Walden) for a bank, community center, and village hall.

The company donated land for the German Lutheran Church, St. Peter and St. Paul, St. James, the Northside Fire House, Depew Village Park, and a YMCA.

[25] The need for workers was so great that company paid the costs associated with passage to America to bring Polish and Slovakian immigrants to the United States to work in its plant in North Tonawanda.

Purportedly, Frank H. Goodyear, another Buffalo businessman, heard of the trip and offered the use of his private car for the occasion.

[26] In May 1893, Albright, along with George V. Forman, John Satterfield, and Franklin D. Locke, founded the Fidelity Trust and Guaranty Company of Buffalo, New York.

Harriman and a group of investors including A. H. Schoellkopf, from the founding family of the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company, and James Forrestal, who would become the first United States Secretary of Defense, owned enough shares to control both Fidelity and M&T.

[28] In 1908, separate from his involvement with the Fidelity Trust and Guaranty Company, Albright served as vice president of Marine Bank's board of directors,[27] along with Stephen M. Clement (president), Charles W. Goodyear (founder of the Great Southern Lumber Company), William H. Gratwick (founder of the lumber firm of Gratwick, Smith & Fryer Lumber Co), Edmund B. Hayes (civil engineer and businessman with the Union Bridge Company), William H. Hotchkiss (a lawyer with Hotchkiss & Bush and later state superintendent of insurance), Edward H. Hutchinson (of Maerz Lithographing Co.), Charles H. Keep (secretary of the Lake Carriers' Association and of the Buffalo Merchants' Exchange), John H. Lascelles (director of the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad), George B. Mathews (partner at Schoellkopf & Mathews flour mill), Moses Taylor, and Cornelius Vanderbilt III.

[31] His largest gift was in 1900, when he made a donation of $350,000 (equivalent to $12,818,000 in 2023) so the then Fine Arts Academy, founded in 1862, could have a permanent home.

[32] Green designed the gallery along the lines of a Greek temple and included 102 columns, more than any other American structure except the Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

[33] When the gallery opened on May 31, 1905, Harvard University President Charles William Eliot gave the keynote address and four city choral organizations performed together.

The oil painting, entitled John J. Albright and His Daughters, is owned by the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

[20] In April 1926, Albright sold many valuable paintings and works of art, including a Mauve, a Jacque, two by Diaz, a Claus, a Troyon, and others by André Crochepierre, Louis Adan, and Abbott H. Thayer, and a Lawrence portrait of George IV, at the American Art Association - Anderson Galleries in New York City as a gift to Buffalo.

[36] In February 1929, the University at Buffalo conferred upon Albright the Chancellor's Medal, its highest honor, recognition of his achievements throughout his life.

[20] Albright's second wife, Susan, was a member of the board of Women Managers' Entertainment & Ceremony subcommittee and the Committee on Fine Artsfor the Pan-American Exposition.

Local writer Edwine Noye Mitchell wrote that the gray stone house was surrounded "by terraces where the crocus and scilla pushed up between the flagstones in the spring, and the pink magnolia blossoms lay thick over the grass from the sidewalk.

Green salvaged the stone balustrade from the terrace and had it reinstalled in front of Lockwood Library at the University of Buffalo's Main Street campus soon after.

While there, the Albrights struck up a friendship with the poet laureate of England, Alfred Noyes, and his wife, who visited them in Jeykl Island in 1914.

[1] The house was sold in 1931 after Albright's death, and when the state of Georgia acquired the entire Jekyl Island in 1947, the cottage was still standing.