Delaware and Hudson Railroad Company Building (SUNY Plaza) | |
Location | Broadway between Division and State Streets Albany, New York |
---|---|
Coordinates | 42°38′53″N73°45′0″W / 42.64806°N 73.75000°W |
Built | 1914-1918 |
Architect | Marcus T. Reynolds |
Part of | Downtown Albany Historic District (ID80002579) |
NRHP reference No. | 72000813 [1] |
Added to NRHP | March 16, 1972 |
SUNY Plaza, or the H. Carl McCall SUNY Building, formerly the Delaware & Hudson Railroad Company Building, is a public office building located at 353 Broadway at the intersection with State Street in downtown Albany, New York, United States. Locally the building is sometimes referred to as "The Castle" or "D&H Plaza"; [2] [3] [4] prior to the construction of the nearby Empire State Plaza it was simply "The Plaza". [5] [6] The central tower of the building is thirteen stories high and is capped by an 8-foot-tall (2.4 m) working weathervane that is a replica of Henry Hudson's Half Moon .
The State University of New York system is centrally administered from the building. The southern tower's four top floors were once the official residence of the Chancellor of SUNY.
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 under the name Delaware and Hudson Railroad Company Building. [1] In 1980, when the Downtown Albany Historic District was listed on the Register, it was included as a contributing property.
The building and the land it sits on, which is located at the foot of State Street along Broadway, have a varied history. The oldest part of the city, it was here that several of Albany's earliest city halls sat, along with the New York State Legislature in the 18th century. The Albany Plan of Union in 1754, presided over by Ben Franklin, was held here. [2] The land was once along the Hudson River's banks, over time being infilled, including in 1911 as part of the construction of the Plaza. [7] The city of Albany purchased and consolidated the land ownership that allowed the D&H to build the building and the city to have a park in front surrounded by a street that acted as a loop for the trolleys running on State Street. Public access was allowed to the Hudson River through the central tower and by way of a tunnel to the other side of the D&H tracks. [8] The design by Marcus T. Reynolds was based on the Nieuwerk annex of the Cloth Hall in Ypres, Belgium. [2] [9]
Reynolds originally envisioned for the site a triangular park at the termination of State Street with a large L-shaped pier that would go north for three city blocks that would also support another park with a bandshell and docks for yachts and boats. That design would have cost $1 million and was opposed by neighborhood groups as too expensive and grand a design' concerns were also expressed about the problems of railroad traffic. [10] The idea of opening up the view of the waterfront to the public was considered unfeasible and undesirable at the time, as the river was full of commercial docks, wharves, warehouses, and railroads. A plan initiated by the Albany Chamber of Commerce – later published under the title Studies for Albany– decided upon a public park as a plaza surrounded by buildings that would screen the locomotive smoke, obnoxious odors and sights of the working waterfront from the vista of State Street. [9]
The building was the corporate headquarters for the D&H Railroad. [2] It was constructed in sections between 1914 and 1918. The central section, including the five-story block at the north end and the thirteen-story tower, connected by the long five-story diagonal wing, was built in 1914-15. Another five-story wing south of the central tower was constructed in 1915-1918; in 1916-1918 another separate but architecturally compatible and physically connected building was constructed to be the headquarters of the Albany Evening Journal newspaper. Another section, a warehouse at the north end, was later demolished. [4]
William Barnes, editor of the Evening Journal, and the Republican boss of Albany [4] had a lavish apartment on the upper floors of his newspaper's building at the south end of the complex. In 1924 the paper was sold to the Albany Times Union and the building became home to various other businesses including the predecessor to the New York State Department of Transportation. [11]
After the D&H and Evening Journal both abandoned the building it sat dormant until November 1972, when the State University of New York (SUNY) announced it would purchase the building as its first permanent home, having occupied One Commerce Plaza as a temporary headquarters since March of that year. SUNY purchased the building in 1973 and interior renovation and construction began that year; they relocated there in 1978. That same year SUNY Chancellor Clifton R. Wharton Jr. decided that the southern tower would house the chancellor's apartment. The total renovation of the Plaza cost $15 million. In 1977 the neighboring Federal Building was purchased and connected to the main building, becoming part of SUNY Plaza. William Hall Associates won the top Owens Corning Energy Conservation Award in the government category for their work in the renovation. [12]
The building's facade was restored from 1996 to 2001; it was covered in scaffolding during the five years of the restoration. [13]
On February 14, 2020, the building was renamed the H. Carl McCall SUNY Building in honor of Carl McCall, a former chairman of the State University of New York Board of Trustees. [14]
From north to south the building consisted of at least six sections. When first built the building had an undecorated warehouse directly behind the old Federal Building built of reinforced concrete. South of where the warehouse stood begins the current structure, beginning with a square tower with four corner turrets. A 5-story tall "arm" diagonally connects the north tower with the 13-story tall central tower. Those sections were built first, in 1914-5. The building was too small for all the D&H employees and so another "arm" was built south of the tower terminating at another square tower with corner turrets to house the offices of the Albany Evening Journal. When finally finished in 1918 the building was 660 feet (200 m) long. [15] Today, without the warehouse, the Plaza is 630 feet (190 m) long and 48 feet (15 m) wide. The Plaza has approximately 200,000 square feet (19,000 m2) of office space, with the former Federal Building providing an additional 90,000 square feet (8,400 m2). [12]
Though the building is in the Gothic Revival and / or Collegiate Gothic styles of architecture in stone and masonry, the original railroad company headquarters building sports several touches that tie the building into the Dutch colonial heritage of [|Albany]] and the early colony of New Netherlands along the Hudson River Valley in the 17th century. The central tower sports an 8-foot-tall (2.4 m) weathervane that is in the shape of explorer Henry Hudson's ship, the Half Moon while the gables of the entire building bear the shields and coat-of-arms of prominent colonial Dutch families including that of Albany's first mayor, Pieter Schuyler. [10] Other non-gothic elements include the names and dates of prominent printers on the portion / wing of the building used by the former major daily newspaper, the Albany Evening Journal , including William Caxton (1487), the father of English printing. [11]
The building serves as the scenic / picturesque terminating vista at the end of State Street in the Downtown Albany Historic District.
Albany is the capital and oldest city in the U.S. state of New York, and the seat of and most populous city in Albany County. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about 10 miles (16 km) south of its confluence with the Mohawk River.
Oneonta is a city in southern Otsego County, New York, United States. It is one of the northernmost cities of Appalachia. Oneonta is home to the State University of New York at Oneonta and Hartwick College. SUNY Oneonta began as a normal school and a teacher's college in 1889, and Hartwick College moved into the city in 1928. The approximately 5,800 students from SUNY Oneonta and the approximately 1,500 students at Hartwick make up a significant percentage of the population of Oneonta. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Oneonta had a population of 13,079. Its nickname is "City of the Hills." While the word "oneonta" is of undetermined origin, it is popularly believed to mean "place of open rocks" in the Mohawk language. This refers to a prominent geological formation known as "Table Rock" at the western end of the city.
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Journal Square is a business district, residential area, and transportation hub in Jersey City, New Jersey, which takes its name from the newspaper Jersey Journal whose headquarters were located there from 1911 to 2013. The "square" itself is at the intersection of Kennedy Boulevard and Bergen Avenue. The broader area extends to and includes Bergen Square, McGinley Square, India Square, the Five Corners and parts of the Marion Section. Many local, state, and federal agencies serving Hudson County maintain offices in the district.
Albany City Hall is the seat of government of the city of Albany, New York, United States. It houses the office of the mayor, the Common Council chamber, the city and traffic courts, as well as other city services. The present building was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson in the Romanesque style and opened in 1883 at 24 Eagle Street, between Corning Place and Pine Street. It is a rectangular three-and-a-half-story building with a 202-foot-tall (62 m) tower at its southwest corner. The tower contains one of the few municipal carillons in the country, dedicated in 1927, with 49 bells.
St. John's Park was a 19th-century park and square, and the neighborhood of townhouses around it, in what is now the Tribeca neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The square was bounded by Varick Street, Laight Street, Hudson Street and Beach Street, now also known for that block as Ericsson Place. Although the name "St. John's Park" is still in use, it is no longer a park and is inaccessible to the public.
The neighborhoods of Albany, New York are listed below.
The history of Albany, New York, began long before the first interaction of Europeans with the native Indian tribes, as they had long inhabited the area. The area was originally inhabited by an Algonquian Indian tribe, the Mohicans, as well as the Iroquois, five nations of whom the easternmost, the Mohawk, had the closest relations with traders and settlers in Albany.
Union Station, also known as Albany Union Station, is a building in Albany, New York, on the corner of Broadway and Steuben Street. Built during 1899–1900, it served originally as the city's railroad station but now houses credit union offices. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) during 1971.
The Downtown Albany Historic District is a 19-block, 66.6-acre (27.0 ha) area of Albany, New York, United States, centered on the junction of State and North and South Pearl streets. It is the oldest settled area of the city, originally planned and settled in the 17th century, and the nucleus of its later development and expansion. In 1980 it was designated a historic district by the city and then listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The streets of Albany, New York, have had a long history going back almost 400 years. Many of the streets have changed names over the course of time, some have changed names many times. Some streets no longer exist, others have changed course. Some roads existed only on paper. The oldest streets were haphazardly laid out with no overall plan until Simeon De Witt's 1794 street grid plan. The plan had two grids, one west of Eagle Street and the old stockade, and another for the Pastures District south of the old stockade.
The architecture of Albany, New York, embraces a variety of architectural styles ranging from the early 18th century to the present. The city's roots date from the early 17th century and few buildings survive from that era or from the 18th and early 19th century. The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 triggered a building boom, which continued until the Great Depression and the suburbanization of the area afterward. This accounts for much of the construction in the city's urban core along the Hudson River. Since then most construction has been largely residential, as the city spread out to its current boundaries, although there have been some large government building complexes in the modernist style, such as Empire State Plaza, which includes the Erastus Corning Tower, the tallest building in New York outside of New York City.
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Marcus Tullius Reynolds was an American architect from the Albany, New York area. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, he was raised by his aunt in Albany after the death of his mother. He attended Williams College and Columbia University and began his life as an architect in 1893. He is well known for his bank designs and specifically his design of the Delaware and Hudson Railroad Company Building in downtown Albany. Many of his buildings still stand today; some are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He was the brother of the Albany historian and author Cuyler Reynolds.
The Knickerbocker and Arnink Garages were two attached stone buildings located on Hudson Avenue in central Albany, New York, United States. Both were built in the early 20th century; the Knickerbocker garage was added to the Arnink garage 12 years after it was built. In 1980, they were listed on the National Register of Historic Places; nine years later they were both demolished and delisted.
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