Days of Future’s Past

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Today I am in Albany, New York.

Albany is known mostly as the capitol of New York State, and not a conventional travel destination.

It’s a place people pass through on the way somewhere else.

Still, I’m in Albany for the day, and want to find something to do.

As it turns out, Albany does have at least one thing worth seeing.

It’s the large legacy of two men, architect Le Corbusier and former Governor Nelson Rockefeller.

Le Corbusier and the International Style

Le Corbusier was a Swiss architect who worked in France for four decades starting in the 1920s.

Along with Walter Gropius and Lugwig Mies van der Rohe, he created the International Style of architecture , which dominated the world in the decades after World War Two.

Taking its cues from the then new world of machines, this style featured clean geometric lines, right angles, a complete lack of decoration, and heavy use of artificial materials like concrete and plate glass.

These buildings are also impersonal and soulless.

The effect is deliberate; Le Corbusier saw buildings as a type of machine to live and work in.




Le Corbusier wanted to be far more than an architect however.

He saw himself as the creator of a new world, whose designs would remake cities and create utopia.

In his view, the cities of Europe in the 1920s where hopelessly unsuited to the demands of a modern world.

They featured decaying buildings, outdated and overloaded infrastructure, and general grime and trash.

The solution was to sweep it all away and create something new.

Le Corbusier’s new world featured tall towers so people could live in clean air and sunshine.

These towers were separated by wide parks, allowing people to reconnect to the natural world.

Finally, the towers were connected by wide roads and expressways, perfectly suited to the newly introduced automobile, the ultimate symbol of personal freedom.

Seen from the perspective of nearly a century later, these ideas resemble a suburban office park more than any sort of utopia, but it’s important to remember how radical they were at the time.

In the 1920s, they went nowhere.




Fast forward to the years after World War Two.

At the time, the middle class was abandoning cities in droves for newly created suburbs.

Urban leaders looked at these trends, and concluded that Le Corbusier had been right after all.

The way to bring people back, and preserve their cities, was to replace their worn-out hearts with modern facilities.

There were as many urban renewal schemes as the planners and builders who carried them out, but the basic ideas in many cases were Le Corbusier’s.

One particular example sits in Albany, New York, and it is the legacy one man: Nelson Rockefeller.




Nelson Rockefeller was a descendent of John D. Rockefeller, who founded Standard Oil and became the wealthiest man in the world.

Nelson Rockefeller, by contrast, cared about art and politics, and he did very well at both.

He was a lifetime trustee of the Museum of Modern Art (it helps that his mother founded the museum) and was Governor of New York State for two decades.

It was in the latter capacity that he created what became his largest single legacy, Empire State Plaza.

Empire State Plaza

In the late 1950s, Albany was a seriously decayed city.

If it were not the seat of New York state government, it would probably be dead.

Nelson Rockefeller decided to fix this, by tearing down the center of the city and replacing it with a huge complex to serve as the center of state government.

Although the complex was officially created by a commission, Nelson Rockefeller personally oversaw every aspect of it, and did the first draft of the design himself.

The design is a classic of the Le Corbusier style, with a huge central plaza surrounded by tall towers.

The towers themselves feature acres of plate glass separated by steel columns.

The rest is covered in marble, which gives the place an almost regal air.

Underneath the plaza is the concourse, a long wide corridor that connects all the buildings.

Under that is a multi-level parking garage.

Following Le Corbusier’s love of cars, a wide expressway runs from this garage direct to the nearest interstate.

This may be the only set of buildings in the world where it’s easier to reach them from the highway than a city street.

The modernist design of the plaza was highly controversial at the time, and still is.




The concourse also reflects Nelson Rockefeller’s taste, because it is lined with major works of modern art.

Rockefeller decided that the complex needed art work because it would inspire the people that worked there.

He ensured that only artists working in New York would be featured (since New York City was the center of the art universe at the time, this wasn’t much of a burden) and he personally approved every piece added to the collection.

Empire State Plaza, in fact, owns one of the largest publicly accessible art collections in the world outside a museum.

I decided to visit the plaza to see this collection, along with the excellent New York State Museum.




The artworks are spread through the corridors of the concourse, with some sculpture on the plaza above.

It’s confusing to find without a map, which the plaza visitor center thankfully supplies.

There is a great deal to see.

Thanks to when it was acquired, the work falls within only three movements, abstract expressionism, color field painting, and minimalism.

Nelson Rockefeller insisted that the work be abstract, because this represented the modern world like the plaza itself.

I ultimately found the collection less satisfying than a similar collection in a museum.

While it has lots of strong work from big names, it’s completely overwhelmed by the setting.

The plaza is so vast, and the buildings around it so big, that the art work barely registers.

The work has roughly the same effect as paintings found in upscale department stores.

It’s also impossible to escape the fact that the complex is, first and foremost, the heart of state government, especially since a brutal budget debate was happening and the buildings were packed with lobbyists and protestors.

New York State Museum

After the plaza itself, I went next door to the New York State Museum.

Every state in the US now has a museum like this, covering state history and artifacts.

New York’s is the largest and one of the best.

It’s incredibly comprehensive, covering everything from a history of logging in the Adirondacks to a room of antique fire engines.

To show how extensive it is, one display contains historic potions used to ward off black flies!




In all this bounty, two areas still stand out.

The first is the section on Native People of New York, which is the most extensive collection available in the state.

The artifacts are arranged with surprising sensitivity.

It includes a reconstruction of a Mohawk long house, where a tape plays tribal legends.

A newer part contains modern artworks from the tribes.




The second standout is the collection on the history of New York City.

It’s rather ironic that the most comprehensive collection of these artifacts is located in Albany.

The displays cover everything from the history of the city, to its role as a port, to the creation of skyscrapers, to the role of Harlem in African American culture.

The collection includes the original set of Sesame Street, which was supposedly set in downtown Manhattan.

It includes the report of the 1820 state commission that created Manhattan’s famous street grid.

The streets are at right angles mostly because rectangular houses were easier to build!




The most poignant section has to be the one related to the World Trade Center attacks and their aftermath.

It includes all the artifacts you would expect, along with many others.

There is a selection of the mementoes left at memorial sites.

There is a collection of letters collected by the widow of a Port Authority worker who was featured in a television documentary.

Also included is a section of destroyed tower wall, a recovered piece of jetliner, and a crushed fire truck pulled from the wreckage.

One lesser known fact is that the builders intended the towers to be a symbol of world peace, by creating a place where different countries could trade with each other.

Instead, they became a symbol of capitalism at its most overbearing, which attracted the fanaticism they did (lest people forget, the first attempt on the towers was the bombing in the garage in 1993, which injured hundreds of people).

The display is surprisingly apolitical, given the strong feelings people still have.

Outdoor Pools in Winter

After dinner, it was time to drive back the way I had come, to North Adams.

North Adams is the site of the Porches Inn.

The inn was originally a series of housing for workers at the mill across the street.

When the mill became the MassMoCA art museum, the houses were renovated into a boutique hotel.

The houses are now connected by a long porch, hence the name.

The hotel is the sort of quirky, design focused place that chains like the W try to be.

The Inn is noted for its unusual swimming pool and hot tub.

They are located outside, and heated so they can be used year round.

This may be the only pool in the US where one can swim laps surrounded by snow.

Doing so without getting hypothermia afterwards requires careful planning (basically, bring a robe and use it after quickly toweling dry).

Naturally, I had to try it.

The stars were out this night, although clouds reduced the view.

The pool is also lit from below, which creates some truly eerie effects when swimming at night.

It was worth it.

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Photos

Empire State Plaza
The central plaza of Empire State Plaza, looking southwest

Empire State Plaza sculpture
One of many sculptures in the Empire State Plaza art collection. This one is by Alexander Calder

Corning Tower
Centerpiece of the plaza

Sculpture against the Corning Building
A work of sculpture is utterly dwarfed by the Corning Building behind it, in Empire State Plaza

The Egg
Officially called the New York State Performing Arts Center, this building is universally known as The Egg. Located at the northeast corner of Empire State Plaza

Inside the plaza
A long wide corridor filled with great art, and budget protestors

New York State Archives and Museum
The New York State Archives building in Empire State Plaza. The lower floors hold the New York State Museum.

Porches Inn
Restored workers houses at the Porches Inn

Porches Inn swimming pool
The swimming pool at the Porches Inn, lit from below and heated for year round outdoor swimming. Lots of fun in the dead of winter!

Empire State Plaza
Backside of the main buildings of Empire State Plaza

New York State Capitol
New York State Capitol building, looking utterly out of place next to the plaza

New York State Plaza, south end
A look at the plaza from the south end, looking west

Plaza highways
New York State Plaza is more easily accessible from the interstate than city streets!