Overlooking

Perched high on the facade of 74 State Street are three rather stern-looking faces atop stylized winged bodies which overlook the busy block below and are probably overlooked by the scores of people passing below.

74 State is a particularly handsome building on lower State Street Hill between Green and North Pearl. It was built for offices in 1910 and originally known as the Kinney and Woodward Building. Recently renovated as a hotel, their site gives a good summary of the structure's history and some remarks by Albany author William Kennedy. Click here to read.

Lost In The Wilderness - Part Five

This is the fifth in a series of posts on the Beaver Kill Ravine.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Aside from the presence of the old brick and stone culvert giving a glimpse of a rushing river beneath the Lincoln Park gully, my other favorite feature of the Beaverkill ravine is the stone. The north and south walls of the gully are lined with heavy gray-black outcroppings of truly ancient bedrock.

According to a geology report in a 1930 bulletin from the New York State Museum, the stone is "Snake Hill shale" which it describes as a "dark, argillaceous, intricately folded and crumpled, as much as 3,000 feet deep."

According to the same 1930 report, there are very few places around Albany where this ancient bedrock lies exposed. I've seen similar stone along the Normskill near Delaware Avenue at the City's southern boundary. The other location given in the bulletin is a spot called Black Rock Cut, somewhere along the old NY Central Tracks near Tivoli Lake.

To be continued...

Random Cow Sticker

The Delaware Avenue section of Albany has been quite chaotic in recent months with a massive street reconstruction project tearing up the sidewalk and road. Walking it is a real chore, but driving it seems even worse. So, I'd rather avoid it for now. But, while running errands the other day, I took a break near St. James Church and Key Bank...and spotted this colorful cow sticker on a fire hydrant near the benches.

Nickels, Dimes, and Quarters

If you're on North Pearl Street, look up at No. 15. Way up, above the modern Rite-Aid sign and just below the roof, you'll see gray terra cotta medallions with the Roman numerals V, X, and VV5. They give a hint to the building's original use. It was built in 1937 to house a S.S. Kresge store where, rather like Woolworth's famous "five and dime," merchandise sold for a nickel, a dime, or a quarter. Let's just say the current occupant is a bit more expensive than that!

The Goblin's Passage

Tucked on the side of the massive flight of steps on the east side of the New York State Capitol is a pair of wooden doors. If you peer through them, you'll see a dim, dusty space piled with vague bulky shapes that appear to be old lamposts and other indistinguishable architectural bits and pieces. And, beyond them, a patch of light from an identical pair of doors on the far side of the stairs.

It's called The Goblin Passage and was apparently meant to allow an easy short-cut from one side of the Capitol stairs to the other. It's obviously been unused - aside from its current storage purposes - for years.

While I grew up close to the Capitol and had toured it many times, the Goblin Passage was something I didn't notice until I saw an exhibit of black & white photos highlighting the building's richly-detailed architecture. I have to admit that I saw this exhibit shortly after seeing Labyrinth and, well, I was quite thrilled to learned our Capitol had its own Goblin Passage.

Past Life

Certainly most people who live in Albany - along with a good many people who just pass through on 787 - are familiar with the U-Haul Self-Storage Building at 139 Broadway. It's hard to miss a building with a full-sized moving truck slowly rotating on the roof!

But probably far fewer people see the ornate evidence of the building's previous incarnation. If one ventures down to this otherwise gloomy-looking southern stretch of Broadway, one finds this beautifully ornamented entrance on the building's western facade, a side that would have once faced a very busy thoroughfare.

The original sign above the door announces that this was once the Albany Hardware & Iron Company, a business that actually had its origins in the 18th century and supplied items ranging from axe heads and bird cages to scales and food choppers to firearms.

Pizza Memories

As far as I can recall, my very first taste of pizza came here at Jonathan's when I was quite small.

Two other pizza shops stand out in my early memories - Jack's American Pie on Delaware Avenue and Mr. B's in Colonie Center. Both Jack's American Pie (with its window full of jade plants) and Mr. B's (with its hard orange booths and little coin-operated jukeboxes at each table) are long gone now.

Jonathan's is still here on North Pearl near Maiden Lane, though there is a For Sale sign in the window. I don't eat downtown often, but still stop at Jonathan's for a slice or two every now and then. The interior has changed a little, but it's still the dark-paneled familiar shop where I had my first slice of hot, cheesy pepperoni pizza.

And it's still crowded with downtown office workers at lunch time.