There are many critics of the Empire State Plaza. Many are revisionists of history or misplace their hopes in a city that could have survived without the state’s massive intervention by creating the Empire Plaza. But I have to wonder what would have happened to the City of Albany, had the Empire Plaza never been built, and the alternative of building out the suburban State Office Campus next to SUNY become a reality.

When the Governor’s Mansion downtown burned in 1961, a popular alternative was to build a new governor’s mansion in a more secure and accessible location in the suburban state office campus. Many state agencies were plan to move out there and expand there, leaving downtown to the Capitol and related legislative offices in the Alfred E Smith State Office Building. Many other state agencies were moving into buildings built out in the suburbs.

The question becomes could the city have sustained its downtown, with most of the state’s offices outside of it? Certainly as demand for cars grew from legislative employees, there would be an impetus to move even more of state government to a suburban location. Possibly even the Capitol building could have been put up for auction, and the state construct a modern, suburban office building for governmental roles.

While it’s true the Capitol was regarded a historic building in the 1960s, it was a derelict building without air conditioning or modern amenities like automatic elevators. It’s not clear that it would be worth saving a structure that while beautiful lacked parking, and was shifting and had an unstable foundation. There was poor traffic patterns around the Capitol, with no modern expressway connecting it to the Thruway and other important expressways. The state could have just put a suburban office building as it’s Capitol, abandoning the old and dated building, much like they had done with a previous Capitol buildings.

Without state government, downtown might have survived, but it would have been a struggle. The D&H Railroad was bankrupt by the late 1960s and the big banks were closing down shop downtown. Without state government making up some of the lost of private industry, could have downtown survived? Or would it have become increasingly ghettoized and abandoned, left decades before the masses rediscovered the cultural value of downtown living?