Erie Canalway – Day 11 – Exploring Albany

We slept in a little, had a later breakfast at the hotel, which was one of the better hotel breakfasts we have had on this trip, and left for a walking tour just after nine. There was a lot to see packed into just 4 km. Our first stop was a giant Dutch clog.

Albany was founded when the Dutch ship the Half Moon, captained by Englishman Henry Hudson, dropped anchor nearby in 1609. The world was in the midst of a Little Ice Age, and the Dutch staked claim to the beaver who thrived here. They forged alliances with indigenous people and established a trade centre on the bank of the Hudson River. Albany was chartered as a city in 1686, making it the second oldest chartered city in the country. We saw representions of The Half Moon all over the city.

In addition to being a canal city, Albany was also a railway city, and the Delaware and Hudson Railway was headquartered in the building in this picture. It is now the State University of of New York (SUNY) System Administration building.

Albany is the capital of New York State. It’s population has been fairly stable at around 100,000 for several decades, but it did suffer some population loss from its high in the mid 50s, although not nearly as much as Buffalo and Rochester did, likely due to the high number of government jobs because of it being the state capital.

That was our main destination for sightseeing for today, but we stopped at a few things along the way.

I’ve noticed in my travel over the last few years that many cities have webpages about their public art, which is something I enjoy visiting, so this is a very useful resource. Albany has a page which we were able to use it to locate some public art to look at on our way to the capital district. There are quite a few murals because of the capital walls project, and we saw many of them enlivening the city as we walked around.

William Street was on the way – the downtown Albany Business Improvement District added lights and colours to create a connective corridor. It’s called “Meet Me in the Middle” by local artist, Eugene O’Neill.

Between William Street and the very impressive capital district was this abandoned property. Like so many rustbelt cities Albany feels very empty and has empty lots and abandoned buildings, with over built roads, and not much traffic. Although, Albany might feel particularly empty right now in the summer with the legislature not operating.

As one approaches the New York State Empire Plaza it has the appearance of a walled or fortified city.

The New York State Empire Plaza concourse connects all the buildings of the state plaza and is known as Albany’s “Underground City” and has food courts, banks, a post office and public art and sculptures.

The art collection located throughout the complex includes 92 large scale, paintings, sculptures, and tapestries. It is called the “most important state collection of modern art in the country”, and “the largest collection of modern American art in any single public site that is not a museum”. We enjoyed looking at the various pieces.

I always enjoy getting a bird’s eye view of a city when I visit, and I discovered that Albany has the tallest building in New York State outside of New York City. The Corning Tower is 42 storeys and it is free to visit the observation level. The Hudson River Valley, the Port of Albany, large portions of the city and its government, the foothills of the Adirondacks, the Catskills, and the Berkshires of western Massachusetts are all visible from the tower.

This is the bridge we will have to ride across tomorrow to get to the train station.

This is the Delaware and Hudson Railway building which I mentioned earlier.

The New York State capital building is part of the Empire State Plaza complex and was completed in 1899 at a cost of US$25 million making it the most expensive government building of its time. There were three teams of architects working on its construction, including Isaac Perry, the architect of Amsterdam castle, and Thomas Fuller, who also designed the Canadian parliament buildings.

Due to the extended construction time of 30 years and the different architects involved, it is a mishmash of styles, including classical/Romanesque, Renaissance classical, and Victorian modified Romanesque.

The building was intended to have a large dome and tower, but they were never completed due to the inability of the lower structure to support the weight. The grand staircase is very impressive and it becomes brighter as one climbs the five storeys towards the skylight.

The Empire State Plaza was the idea of governor Nelson Rockefeller. He was inspired to create the complex after Queen Julianna of the Netherlands visited Albany for a celebration of the area’s Dutch history. The area around the capital building was known as “The Gut“, an area of cheap hotels, flop houses, and dive bars. Rockefeller was embarrassed and conceived the basic design of a complex with the architect Wallace Harris. Rockefeller doodled his ideas on the back of a postcard and Harrison revised them. When I saw pictures of the plaza, I said it reminded me of Brasilia. As I did research for the blog, I found out that Brasilia, Versailles, and Chandigarh were used as inspiration for the plaza.

7000 residents were evicted in order to build the 98 acre site. It was constructed between 1965 and 1976 in the modernist, brutalist and international styles of architecture. The total cost was $1.7 billion, and more than 11,000 state employees work at the complex.

The Plaza consists of various steel and reinforced concrete buildings, all clad in imported stone, except for the egg, which exposes its concrete exterior, and is a performance arts center. The building sits on a six storey stone clad platform.

This is City Hall.

The Albany Home Savings Bank building was built in 1927 in the art deco style and features images of Native Americans and colonial settlers near the roof line.

This Hudson River Way pedestrian bridge, which has a bike trough, connects the downtown area to the waterfront.

We had a great lunch at the Stacks Espresso Bar.

Nipper was a fox terrier, so named because he loved to nip at peoples ankles. He was found as a stray in Britain. One day, his owner noticed him listening to a phonograph and painted a picture of him. One thing led to another, and he ended up as the RCA company mascot. We encountered a number of small versions of him around the city, and plan to go to look at a giant version tomorrow before we catch the train Niagara Falls.

We walked across the pedestrian bridge to the end of the Erie Canalway Trail for a picture with the sign.

On our way back, we noticed a highway ramp that had a fence along the edge and appeared to have plants on it. I googled it and found out that the Albany Skyway is an elevated park and pedestrian bridge that provides an active transportation crossing of the highway from downtown to the Hudson Riverfront. It is a converted from an underutilized Interstate 787 exit ramp. It opened in 2022. It reminds me of a scaled down version of New York City’s Highline which I visited a couple years ago. There is also an elevated park in St Thomas on an old train trestle.

We decided to eat dinner at the Common Routes Brewing Company, which we spotted from the Skyway, and went back to the room for a rest before dinner.

When we got back to the restaurant at dinner time, we realized that the Google listing for the hours was incorrect, and that it was on closed on Mondays.

So we wandered back over to the area where we had lunch, and found a Thai restaurant. It was good, and one of the less expensive meals that we had during on our trip.

There are some beautiful blocks of old buildings along N. Pearl St.

The Palace Theatre was originally built as a movie theatre and completed in October 1931. It has been renovated and is used as a live entertainment venue, now.

After dinner, we headed over to the cookie store that I peaked into yesterday. They had a cute bike rack out front. Unfortunately, it was a 45 minute wait to get a batch of fresh baked cookies so we headed back to the hotel for bed.


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