Albany, Hub of the Empire State > 근교여행

ALBANY?” my wife, Penny, asked me when I suggested a trip up the Hudson to the state capital. “Isn’t that a dump?” Like many New Yorkers who presume that Albany is not worth a stop (nonpolitician New Yorkers, at least), she had never been there.

 

In 1982, Mayor Ed Koch of New York alienated upstaters (while running for governor) by deriding Albany as “a city without a good Chinese restaurant.” Last year Mark Green, during his unsuccessful run for state attorney general, made a similar gaffe, speculating on television that Mayor Bloomberg would forgo a race for governor because of Albany’s lack of gourmet dining establishments.

 

But as my wife was to learn, Albany far exceeds the usual expectations. It has impressive classical and modern architecture, attractive open spaces, a thriving music scene, a world-class collection of public abstract art, and — take note, future candidates for statewide office — several very good restaurants.

 

The first tourist stop is the chateau-like State Capitol, a huge 19th-century stone building with Renaissance flourishes that looks like something out of “The Triplets of Belleville.” Even shrouded by scaffolding for a restoration project, it is imposing. Guides lead tours through opulent chambers, grand sandstone and granite staircases and mosaic tiled corridors.

 

Senator Joseph Bruno, the majority leader, says he thinks visitors should devote time to the Capitol. “Most people who do get here do a tour for 45 minutes,” he said, “but you wander through this place — every stairway, every hallway is like a projection of the greatest Gothic architecture in the world.” His workplace, the Senate Chamber, was designed by H. H. Richardson and has a hand-carved oak ceiling 50 feet high, stained-glass windows, marble archways and remarkable acoustics. The second floor of the Capitol is rumored to be haunted, Senator Bruno volunteered, though he has not seen any ghosts himself. “Some people swear they see movements,” he said, “the shadows, the spirit kind of things.”

 

Perhaps the ghosts are frustrated state comptrollers of days past. When construction on the Capitol started in 1867, the architect Thomas W. Fuller promised to finish it in four years for $4 million. Thirty years (and four architects) later, when Governor Frank S. Black declared the building completed, costs had grown to $25 million — and here and there, artisans were still busy.

 

Marvin Wallace, who leads Capitol tours, pointed out half-finished carvings on a Senate staircase. The story goes that in 1899 Gov. Theodore Roosevelt, who thought enough was enough, happened upon a craftsman working on the carvings and issued a stop-work order in mid-chisel.

 

But no politician shaped Albany more than Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller.

 

Not long after he took office in 1959, Rockefeller received a visit from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. The condition of the city mortified him. “The Capitol was dirty, it needed cleaning, there were air-conditioners sticking out of windows,” said Dennis R. Anderson, curator of the Empire State Plaza Art Collection (which did not exist in those days). In a show of executive power, Rockefeller pushed hard for a new headquarters for the state government, and he got it. The Empire State Plaza, with 10 buildings on 98 acres, opened in 1969, during the third of his four terms as governor. A vibrant neighborhood had been razed to clear the land, displacing 7,000 people.

 

Debate the merits of eminent domain — this is Albany, after all — while exploring the plaza’s marble walkways and impressive modernist buildings (most of which house legislative and administrative offices) designed by Wallace K. Harrison, who was also lead architect of the United Nations.

 

In and around the buildings — mostly in the concourses linking them — are the 92 pieces of the modern art collection that Mr. Anderson now curates. Rockefeller, who had served as president of the Museum of Modern Art before becoming governor, donated a Jackson Pollock painting and personally approved the purchase or commission of the rest of the collection.

 

Rockefeller had shown his passion for artwork in the capital years earlier. Before his first inaugural dinner, he made time to oversee the positioning of some of his own art — with the help of his own art staff — in the Executive Mansion.

 

Since the Empire Plaza collection was completed in the early 1970s, the concourses have morphed into mini-malls. Works by Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Louise Nevelson and Franz Kline can be steps away from McDonald’s or a Hallmark shop.

The plaza’s showstopper is the Egg, a concrete concert hall that resembles an oversized egg cup. Aimee Mann will perform at the Egg on Dec. 16. Nearby, you can amble in good weather around a pair of reflecting pools and look at the sculpture: “Triangles and Arches,” a stabile by Alexander Calder that recalls the sails of a sloop; “Two Lines Oblique” by George Rickey, which looks like a giant silver Y that sprouts jousting lance-like arms; and Ellsworth Kelly’s “Yellow Blue,” a slanted steel burst of color that was moved to its present home in a grass-enclosed area across from the Egg because of its unintended popularity with skateboarders. Wooden benches invite resting and al fresco snacking.

 

Spare some time for the New York State Museum in the pagoda-esque building on the plaza’s south end. Its exhibits include “The World Trade Center: Rescue Recovery Response,” honoring the police officers, firefighters and emergency workers who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001. The sight of a crushed, charred engine pumper from a Manhattan firehouse that lost four firefighters sucks all the air from the gallery. To change the mood, watch children scream in delight on the hand-carved horses of an antique carousel on the museum’s fourth floor. Rides last four minutes, and no one seems to mind if young passengers enjoy a second go-around.

 

Food courts around the Capitol serve snacks, but for a stellar meal reserve a table at McGuire’s, which Metroland, a weekly Albany newspaper, has called the best place for dining “when someone else is paying.” For more modestly priced meals, go to the suburbs — to Karavalli, an Indian restaurant in Latham, or the Hong Kong-influenced Emperor’s in Colonie, where the shrimp with minced garlic and ginger would make Ed Koch eat more than his words.

 

Lunch at Jack’s Oyster House changed my wife’s opinion of Albany for good. A family-owned place open since 1913, Jack’s is a clams casino, frosty mug of beer and bananas Foster kind of place with white tablecloths and wrought-iron chandeliers. At one table, a girl celebrated her birthday with a mound of fuchsia cotton candy presented on a silver tray. At another, misty-eyed employees of a bus company toasted a retiring colleague. My wife ordered, appropriately, oysters Rockefeller with a spinach Pernod mousse and Hollandaise sauce. As she speared a plump bluepoint, she plotted our next visit to Albany.