Surprise! Albany's impressive train station

It may not be located downtown, but Albany, N.Y. has one impressive train station.

Climbing up from the platforms, arriving passengers enter a grand hall that feels unexpectedly monumental. It's way better, for example, than what Amtrak is stuck with at Penn Station in New York City.

All this for Albany?

Well, yes. Albany claims to be the ninth-busiest station in the whole Amtrak system (a statistic I found on ever-reliable Wikipedia), something that seems rather surprising at first glance.

But then again, it makes sense when you consider that Albany boasts a level of passenger rail service that most small cities in the United States haven't seen since World War II.

Not only does the Capital Region enjoy frequent service to Penn Station (14 round-trips each weekday, according to the current Amtrak timetable), but it also maintains frequent service to Buffalo (three trains daily each way), as well as nightly service west to Cleveland and Chicago (sleeper on the Lake Shore Limited, anyone?), east to Boston, and north to the thriving metropolis of Rutland, Vt.

Add in two exotic international trains that cross the Canadian border – the Maple Leaf to/from Toronto and the Adirondack to/from Montreal, which both pass through here each day – and you've got yourself a schedule that most cities of similar size would envy.

So it adds up to one busy place – about 700,000 rail passengers a year, again according to Wikipedia. And things will only get busier due to a recent agreement with freight carrier CSX for Amtrak to take control of the tracks from here south to Poughkeepsie, a big chunk of the route to New York City.

This will improve dispatching and also clear the way for track improvements to speed up travel time to/from the Big Apple, so more service is planned for the future – so much so that a fourth platform is planned in additional to the existing three.

Just as the level of passenger service evokes a bygone era (a nightly sleeper to Chicago?), so does the passenger terminal. It's big – not quite cathedral scale, but big enough to give the Capital Region a rail gateway that the community can be proud of.

The main hall, ringed by balconies and sporting an impressively tall windows, has a genuinely grand feeling. The peaked roof soaring above evokes a feeling of being in some great Gothic hunting lodge or library. The tall windows looked impressive and inspiring even in the darkness.

The colors work together like players in a string quartet: elegant pink granite, rich brown wood, green-painted steel structural and ornamental elements, cream-colored walls, all of it anchored and reflected and amplified by very attractive designs in the floor tiling.

And it's a busy enough place to support a nice range of retailers, including a full sit-down restaurant, a big bookstore/newsstand, and other shops. It was enough to be useful, anyway, to those of us on the Lake Shore Limited (Boston to Chicago, with a two-hour layover in Albany) who wanted to escape the train for awhile and wander around.

All this in a station that, praise be, was actually designed and built in the modern era, opening in 2002.

I'd been through it before, but never had a chance to explore the station since it opened. (In earlier days, my primary memories of Albany are of the downtown bus station, which I used to visit a girlfriend. Later, while in college in the 1980s, I would take Amtrak from NYC up to visit a high school friend at Rennsalaer Polytechnic Institute, but I recall the station being little more than a platform in the middle of nowhere.

Of course prior to all this, Albany was home to Albany Union Station, an enormous Beaux Arts station from the late 19th century right in center of downtown. Here it is:

With rail service in decline, then-tenant Penn Central moved out in December 1968, and the majestic building fell into serious disrepair. Fortunately, a bank renovated it in the 1980s, and it's back in business today, though not as a rail station.

Which takes us back to the present station, about a mile-and-a-half away and across the Hudson from downtown Albany. Although it was dark, I ventured out front to see if the station's exterior lived up to the inside. I wasn't disappointed. The place has the same feel – a structure of consequence that gives the feeling that something important happens here.

And perched high above the main entrance was, yes, a giant clock (non-digital) with four sides that must have been visible from some distance. The faces were lit, too and each seemed to be displaying the correct time, too.

Yes, I suppose overall the place does have a kind of modern synthesized Disney World feel to it. The clock tower in particular looks like something out of sci-fi movie – or maybe a giant pencil eraser. In terms of a local reference point, it might be a kind of stripped-down version of the Governor's Mansion:

Is this...

...an homage to this?

Perhaps this feeling is a function of the place just being so – well, new. After all, we don't see many brand spanking new train stations in this country anymore.

In fact, the only other one I can think of is the big new Lautenberg transfer station in Secaucus, N.J, which rises out of the marshes and does its best to channel the ghost of the original Penn Station, the next stop on the line. The Lautenberg station, too, feels kind of theme-park-ish, perhaps just by virtue of its newness. But hey – it took Grand Central Station a century to become the Grand Central Station we know today.

One element that adds to the station's role as a transport hub is a surprisingly robust bus service. I remember my RPI friend joking about the local bus system's inane radio commercials, but there seems to be a heckuva lot more options than in my hometown of Manchester, N.H. Check out the rack of timetables!

Maybe it helps to be the capital city of the “Empire” state, with all the prestige (and money) that comes with it. Maybe it's no coincidence that the Albany area also boasts a first-rate airport with a wonderful contemporary terminal, as well. (I passed through there in March, 2012.)

Minor quibbles: the bridge above the platforms forms a kind of airline gate waiting area, complete with TV set droning on. Lose it!

But no matter. Albany's train station is a delightful surprise, especially in the context of the revenue-starved state of passenger rail service in the United States. In some places, the detail is extraordinary, such as this frosted and gridded ceiling on the stairways down to the platform.

I would love to see it during the day, with sunlight flooding not only the stairwells, but streaming through the giant windows and down from the glass cupola set way up in the ceiling, like some kind of oversized lighthouse.

So take a lesson from Albany, other cities. A passenger rail station erected in our lifetime does NOT have to have the inspiration and ambiance of a Quonset hut. No indeed – it can be an inviting beacon of light and space, which is certainly was when I passed through.

Albany (ALB): Air travel, Shaker-style

It says a lot about Albany (N.Y.) International Airport that even with a big part of the main terminal's interior floor blocked off for reconstruction, the place still works. It works as a transport facility, as architecture, as an introduction to the community, and as a worthy setting for beginning or ending a journey. It's a class act all around.

And this all happens without the benefit of sheer size. Albany International (ALB) is small, and not a busy place. Like a lot of mid-sized U.S. airports, it's been losing service as U.S. airlines have tried shrinking into profitability. ALB handled about 3 million passengers a year in the prior to 2008; since then, the count has slid to 2.5 million.

But the terminal, which opened in 1998, is clearly designed for the long haul. It's full of design detail that nods surprisingly to the local presence of a colony of Shakers, a religious order that flourished in the 19th century. They once actually farmed the land on which the airport sits, and so the terminal is full of Shaker elements -- exposed wood, clean lines, and elegant simplicity.




A Shaker airline terminal? Who would have guessed?

There's also some surprising eccentricity. Look at this balcony railing:


The place, which replaced an outdated 1960s facility, is also heavy on exposed brick, especially the exterior. I don't know what bricks have to do with Shaker design, but this called to mind the industrial heritage of this part of the Hudson River valley. It seemed rooted in a sense of place, and not some off-the-shelf scheme. Large porthole-like windows added style and energy without seeming gimmicky.


Interestingly, the bricks disappear as the building rises upwards, leaving the higher points sheathed in mirrored glass with vertical metal striping. This reminded me of Albany's state office buildings, done in a look I'll call "Empire Style." Somehow it said New York, and nowhere else.

Before going inside, check out the parking garage. Airports may boast an impressive terminal, but often hide it behind an ugly parking garage, often erected without any concern for design. So the first thing an arriving traveler sees is a hulking prison-like mediocrity, a monument to how much can be saved on architect fees. What a depressing way to start one's journey!

But not in Albany, where the parking garage sports an exterior that harmonizes with the terminal, but also somehow seems playful. How did they accomplish that? Elements include a circular rotunda that houses an interestingly varied set of stairwells.




Despite all the concrete, this says "Explore me!" almost like it was a playground.

With other stairwells sporting parapet-like caps, and varied use of exterior patterns, the place kinda looked like a fortress, thought not a forbidding one. To me, it came across as more of a play fort.


So, in driving up to the terminal, instead of the usual county jail parking garage, I encountered a well-appointed complex that seemed, well, glad to welcome me. The sunny afternoon helped, but the building was doing most of the heavy lifting.

Inside, the ticket hall is housed in a spacious (but not gigantic) hall that follows a smart curve. Afternoon light flooded the space from above, where the upper reaches are decorated with simple Shaker-style horizontal lines that define the space. Nice!


And yes, a large portion of the space is blocked off to allow for what I was told was "floor replacement," which seems kind of drastic for a still-new building, but whatever. At least they're not letting the place fall apart.


The other side of the lower level houses a baggage claim area and rental car counters. It's the one space that seems a little outsized, although it's hard to say because it's also partially blocked for floor replacement.


Big high ceilings risk making you feel puny, but the hall also functions as a grand entrance to the roadway and the community beyond.

To me, this portal leading to the roadway seemed to take on the characteristics of a grandfather clock. Nice!


To reach the gate areas, you head up to the second level, passing some truly impressive detail work that includes wavy lines and Shaker wood sheathing. It's classy and playful at the same time.


And this is as good a time as any to note the strong presence of art throughout the airport. Start looking and you'll notice odd pieces all over the place, such as this abstract sculpture, one of two that loom over the escalators to the upper level.


Here it is in context:


It works in part because the Shaker-inspired design is simple enough to allow the place to function as an ersatz gallery. It can handle even aggressively abstract stuff without it looking out of place, and it does.

The art is not there by chance. It's part of a deliberate effort to get rotating exhibits in front of passengers streaming in and out of Albany International Airport. The third level functions as a full-fledged art gallery, with coordinated shows that are open to the public every day from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Yay extended access!)

Alas, the gallery is upstairs near the airport's observation deck, and somewhat out of the way of most passenger traffic. Still, it's visible from below, and the gallery space does get a fair amount of visitors. I came through during the last days of a smart-alecky show called "LOL," an exhibit emphasizing humor in art.

It really was funny. I didn't get a picture of the pizza box that was part of the exhibit, but here are a few others...






These are not images you expect to encounter when passing through an airport, which is definitely in Albany's favor. I also liked the fact that the airport administrative offices were integrated with the exhibit space rather than behind some kind of impersonal one-way glass compound isolated from the public.

Although the art spoke for itself, I got some helpful background from Sharon Bates, the airport's Arts and Culture program, who I bumped into on the second level. She introduced herself and we got chatting. Turns out ALB has the most aggressive and consistent art programs of any airport I've encountered.

Sharon's job is to coordinate it all, and she's been on the job since before the new terminal opened. Among the more interesting intiatives she described: a program to paint poetry on the baggage belts to give passengers something to contemplate. And it's all rounded out by "Departure," a gift store on the lower level that includes art-related items in addition to the usual paraphernalia.

So more credit to Albany for taking its airport seriously enough to have Sharon prowling the place, making it a distinctive showcase for local art.

And even while we talked, I noticed design details that lifted the place above the ordinary. Take the edges of the signs right above us:


One thing I wondered about was the lack of signage for the upstairs gallery. Sharon said it's a struggle to claim sign space that could be used for ad revenue. The security checkpoint happens to be ringed on all sides by the art gallery above, so for awhile the TSA people wanted the view blocked off for security reasons!



This is totally absurd and I'm glad they didn't go through with it. If it had, the gallery would have been left only with this signage, on the stairway leading up to it:

Also on the upper level: Gate areas were visible from the observation deck, something that fewer airports seem to bother to include these days:


An unusual distinction held by Albany: it's one of very few airports in the world that make use of dual jetways, which allow passengers to board both the front and back of the plane at the same time. Southwest is the only carrier that uses this capability; the rear jetway has to be lifted up and over the wing like it's some kind of carnival ride.


As a non-passenger, I couldn't get beyond the security barrier, which looked like this, with the third-floor art gallery space looking down over it:


So I can't speak for the gate areas, which include one 1970s pier from the older terminal that was kept when then the complex was rebuilt. But what I did see was more than enough to say that Albany International Airport is a smart, classy, and inspiring place to fly in and out of. The people of New York's 'Capital Region' are fortunate indeed.