What to do with Union Station?

Of course, as soon as Penn Central was allowed/required to abandon Albany’s Union Station, there had to be plans, debates, and schemes about what to do with the venerable, but run-down, facility. Designed by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, it had opened in 1900 but had seen better days by the time it closed in 1969. A column in the Times-Union early that year lamented the potential loss. “In Albany, where besides City Hall we have Hooker’s old Academy and not much else that rises beyond the second-rate, Union Station must count as important architecture.” Ouch.  The writer went on:

“The easiest solution to the problem of an abandoned depot is to tear it down. But it would be really great to find a use for it. My girl guide thinks that it would make a superb market, an Albanian equivalent to Les Halles of European cities. Or a department store. And she sees Broadway coming to life as a main shopping street. Maybe. It is, anyway, a great deal more appealing to one’s sense of architectural conservation than the usual experience of worse buildings replacing better or their being flattened into highways as will soon happen to those charming conceits of Marcus T. Reynold’s [sic], the Pruyn Library and the little bank at the northwest corner of Broadway and Columbia, together with a number of good, old houses.”

Markets and shopping had been raised as potentials before, even 10 years before when the idea of closing the station was first raised. But downtowns were in serious retrenchment in 1969; stores were moving out, not in. And, of course, an aquarium was proposed. Aquariums are always proposed. Mayor Corning said that the State University was interested in turning the station into a marine biology facility and aquarium, and indeed they appear to have investigated it for a time, looking to the state-built aquarium in Niagara Falls as an example. But no.

In 1969, State Sen. Albert B. Lewis  of Brooklyn suggested that the Cultural Education Center (then just being called the Cultural Center) be housed in the old station, apparently rather than as part of the South Mall. But the idea got “the cold shoulder” from Mayor Corning, who said he saw no relationship between the size of the station and the much larger proposed cultural center. He noted it was about one-tenth the size of the State Education Department and one-fiftieth the size of the cultural center. Sen. Lewis’s motivation was likely savings, as he argued that using the station would save $36 million in construction, at a time when bids had come in $30 million over the estimates. Of course, it went nowhere.

The State of New York (specifically, DOT) actually ended up owning Union Station, part of its purchase of holdings of Penn Central in order to build the Riverfront Arterial now known as Interstate 787. In 1971 (and probably other times, too), the State put the station up for sale, in this case asking $320,000, but there were no takers. The Commissioner of General Services Almerin C. O’Hara said he thought the structure should be demolished. “In my opinion, the state can no longer afford to maintain the building. It would be difficult to rehabilitate. So as far as I’m concerned, if we can get the money, we’re going to demolish it.” Either they never got the money or someone at a higher level nixed that idea, because the station remained, unpurchased and unloved, apparently until its rehabilitation was announced in 1984, and completed in 1986, to house Norstar Bank’s headquarters.