Empire State Plaza - Albany NY
The term urban renewal is very charged. To some people it is the replacement of “urban blight” with new, clean, and useful centers. To others it is the destruction of the working class neighborhoods, replacing them with places that do not serve or welcome them. In either case, it involves displacing thousands of, usually poor, people and the neighborhood they live in. Nelson Rockefeller In the early 1960’s, then-governor Nelson Rockefeller decided that the area surrounding the New York State capitol building, built in 1898, was unsuitable for showing visiting dignitaries. He took control of one hundred acres of buildings, that housed around seven thousand people, by eminent domain. In 1965, he began construction on his grand scheme, The Empire State Plaza , to build a governmental mega-complex. Architect Wallace Harrison designed the seven buildings, using the brutalist style was popular at the time. These include the New York Legislative Office Building, the Cultural Ed...