Empire State Plaza

The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza is a unique architectural masterpiece which houses 11,000 New York employees in a complex of ten buildings. The Plaza offers a world-class modern art collection, New York State’s Museum, Library and Archives, a distinctive performing arts center, convention center and more. It serves as a monument to the diversity and significance of New York, and also as a testament to Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, whose determination and vision brought about its creation.

http://www.ogs.ny.gov/esp/

Energy and the Empire Plaza

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The Empire Plaza and connected buildings (Alfred E Smith and Capitol) use 111 gigawatt hours of power a year (electricity only, doesn’t include fossil heating or cooling).

To build a solar farm to power the Empire Plaza it would require demolishing 320 acres of buildings in the city of Albany, which is three and third more buildings then had to demolished to build the Empire Plaza itself – figuring 2.8 acres of land needed within the city for every gigawatt hour per year of electricity generated.

That’s roughly the area of the South Mall Arterial to Interstate 787 to the FBI Building to an imaginary line connecting to Eagle Street. 100 percent renewable sounds like a good idea, but it has an enormous environmental impact.

After the rain

At least that’s what my back of the envelope calculations show.

Almost Heaven

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I heard they renamed the LOB to “Hart Office Building” and put “US Senate” logos on it, for a movie they are filming today in Albany. My thought was, that would be nice, as it would be much closer to “Almost Heaven, West Virginia.” And as Justin Moore once sung, “If heaven wasn’t so far away…”

Wally’s Vision, from Clay to Concrete – 98 Acres in Albany

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Wally’s Vision, from Clay to Concrete – 98 Acres in Albany

It is difficult to determine which elements of the design originate with Rockefeller or with Harrison. Each spoke of the other as the visionary. In his unpublished memoir entitled, “Builder: A Personal Memoir of Nelson K. Rockefeller,” Wally tells us that he could not remember when Nelson first discussed the Mall with him, but he recalls that the Governor sketched his concept on the back of an envelope while they flew together from Washington to New York. That sketch has not been found. While the Mall’s signature elements were indeed conceptualized by Rockefeller, they were realized in concrete, marble, steel and glass by Harrison and his firm, Harrison and Abramovitz.