An Alternative Plan for Albany

All over Albany recently invited us to write a brief alternative history of the South Mall. This is the real story behind that fiction. On March 28, 1962—one day after the State of New York appropriated 98.5 acres in downtown Albany—the City’s planning consultant, Isadore Candeub, denounced the State’s action at a luncheon hosted by…

The Mystery of the Missing Model

More than a year after appropriating 98.5 acres—and 9 months after demolitions began—the State of New York finally unveiled two scale models embodying plans for a futuristic office complex in a revitalized Albany. Taking center stage at the April 23, 1963 ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda, Governor Nelson Rockefeller declared that the State’s plan would…