Friday, November 13, 2009

Legislative Office Building

Before the construction of the Empire State Plaza, New York State's legislators kept their offices somewhere else. I don't really know where, but I suppose they were scattered here and there around the capitol, in other state buildings or converted town houses.

The main entrance to the LOB on State Street.

Since 1971, however, the legislature has a dedicated office building for those lawmakers who don't have offices inside the capitol itself. Of course, that would be most of them, since only the leadership members can have an office in the old capitol.

Agency Building 4 pokes up behind the more horizontal LOB.

I used to walk through this building all the time on my way into and out of the plaza to work. Except for the times when I would walk through the capitol building. All of the buildings on the plaza are connected by a concourse, a quarter mile long corridor underneath the plaza itself.

The LOB and its little sister, the Justice Building (right).

The concourse is more than a simple corridor, of course. It contains shops and restaurants, other services, and is home to an extensive collection of modern art, one of the legacies of former governor Nelson Rockefeller. There is also a meeting center, an underground bus terminal, and connections to the capitol building and the A.E. Smith office building. The concourse is handy for moving around the capitol complex in bad weather, especially in winter.

Art outside the LOB.

The Legislative Office Building, or LOB for short, contains a cavernous lobby atrium with a grand staircase that leads from street level down to the concourse level. I watched Jane Fonda film a scene from one of her lesser known (and pretty bad) movies called "Rollover" (released in 1981) in that atrium once. Unfortunately, due to recent security measures, moving through these buildings is not as easy as it once was.

6 comments:

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  2. I remember that movie :) I didn't know that it was filmed in Albany.

    St. Louis was the set of a George Clooney movie filmed last year, coming out this year... it has something to do with an airport. I think it's called "Up and Away" or "Fly Away" or something like that. Elliot went to pick up something at our local grocery store one day, and the store was all segmented off because they were filming there. It was summertime or Spring, I think, and they were also putting fake snow all over everyplace where they filmed.

    Judy

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  3. Only a gain of four pounds in two weeks ? In the land of hamburgers and sunny-side-ups ? You were hardly trying !! Nick and I managed the best part of a stone each when we last holidayed in America.
    Maybe staying with friends is friendlier for the waistline. Hotels and diners are a total disaster. But every pound was fun !!

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  4. I wonder if Americans will ever got over 9/11.

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  5. judy, only a few scenes of that movie were shot in Albany.

    jean, and I actually ate hamburgers and sunny-side-ups!

    starman, and with all that security, I'm not sure anyone feels safer...

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