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| City Hall Albany |
Today we spent some time in Albany. We went on a walk around town to look at old buildings admiring their architecture. After that we were able to go in and tour the capitol building. This first picture above is of city hall. I personally do not like this style building, to me it looks a little creepy but I think that's because it is a dark rusty color. City hall was built in 1883 in a Romanesque style, the building having lots of patterns and a clock tower with bells. This style has a lot of arches, it's a rustic style with fine carvings and it symbolizes stability.
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| Court of Appeals |
The next building we saw on our walk that really stood out to me was the Court of Appeals building. I am a person who loves light and brightness and because the building was white it reflects light making it look really pretty. I also really like columns so I personally think it makes a building look eloquent. This building was built in 1842 and is made out of marble, it represents honesty and justice. It is a neoclassical type of architecture. There are many buildings that are similar to this one such as the Bush memorial located on Russell Sage campus, the White House and many memorials in the nations capitol.
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| IBM Building Albany |
The last building I want to mention from our architecture walk is the IBM building. This building interested me because it shows how budgets have changed over time and how many businesses cannot afford to build the beautiful buildings they once did. This building is unique because it reflects other buildings around the area. The building isn't as intricate as the rest, it's very simple in design. It really does not fit in with the beautiful buildings around it. Precious mentioned how the building looked very fragile, which I totally agree with.
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| Old Stone Road |
Michael was explaining how at one point Albany had very narrow streets made of stone. I wish I could have seen how the streets looked during that time, cobblestone arrangements are pretty to see. It's amazing to see how much can change in time. Now Albany is made up of huge highways and hectic streets.
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| Empire Plaza |
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| Million Dollar Staircase |
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| Engravings on the Million Dollar Staircase |
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| Turtle Engraved on the Assembly Staircase |
After our walk, we could not wait to get into the capitol building to cool off. It was so hot and being on the pavement walking around we could not get away from the heat. The building is shown above in the picture of the Empire Plaza. This building looked like a castle in my opinion and it looked a lot taller than it actually is, the steep staircase in the front adding to it's height. There are many arches like the city hall building and it had a French influence while it was being built. The ceiling is made up of terracotta and slate which is really heavy. It took over 30 years to complete this building and later on the tour we found out it's not actually complete yet. There are spots in different rooms where the engravings are not complete, they were fired because so much money was already spent building the capitol building and it wasn't complete yet. It took over 25 million dollars to build the capitol and in today's economy it would cost over half a billion . The tour was very interesting, and my favorite part was being able to see the stair cases and the engravings on them. The first stair case we saw was the Assembly Staircase. This was really pretty and I saw an engraving of a turtle on it. Naturally I would take a picture of this because I am a turtle lover. The next stair case I saw that I absolutely loved is called the million dollar staircase. Do not let the name fool you because it actually cost a lot more than a million dollars to build. There are so many beautiful engravings you can see on the stair case. Walking along it I kept feeling how well it was built because the staircase felt so soft, the sand stone adding to the quality. This was really cool to see. I was really happy to see what the capitol building looks like on the inside after passing it many times riding the bus and driving in the car.
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