Seriously? Hoxsie has never featured the Wellington Hotel? Allow me to correct that with this kinda amazing postcard of Albany’s only “garage-in” hotel. Not sure exactly when it was published, though it seems to be pre-1927, since the building on the corner of State and South Pearl is the predecessor to the lovely National Savings Bank Building. And post-1911, since that’s when the 17-room Wellington expanded to more than 400 rooms. From its emphasis on its parking garage space, I’d put it somewhere in the ’20s. At that point the hotel was really two buildings, across Howard Street from each other. If redevelopment plans ever move forward, the facade at least will be retained; much of the rest of the building has already been demolished, along with its neighbors.
The parking garage shown in the illustration still stood when I first posted this back in July of 2012 – and it still stands as far as Google StreetView is concerned (in the end of 2021, as I update this). But it and the Wellington site were finally redeveloped into what became the Capital Center, so enjoy these relics of what it looked like for decades before:
