On June 21, 1965, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller gathered with state and local officials and other dignitaries and laid the South Mall cornerstone — a 7,500-pound block of white granite quarried near Cortland, N.H. — that sealed a document box containing artifacts in the foundation of a long, low-slung building taking shape along Swan Street near the intersection with State Street.
Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller peers around the corner of the 3¾ ton cornerstone, which he had just unveiled, at ceremonies on June 23, 1965, that marked the start of construction of the $350-million state government-building complex. Behind the governor are (from the left): Michael Powers, chairman of the Albany Common Council; Mrs. Rockefeller; Albany Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd, and Lt. Gov. Malcolm Wilson.
In its wake, the $2 billion white marble colossus, reviled as fascist architecture writ large and "the City Beautiful's last erection" (by Wolf Von Eckardt in New York magazine), left a clouded legacy as the most controversial and most transformative construction project since the Dongan Charter made Albany a city in 1686. The South Mall — opponents spelled it South Maul and old-timers never referred to it by its official name, the Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza — is now a part of life in the Capital Region.
"The South Mall is a logical evolution in a lifelong series of building projects for Nelson Rockefeller, who cut his teeth making deals in the New York City real estate market," says Richard Norton Smith, author of the 810-page biography of Rockefeller, "On His Own Terms."
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Rockefeller and supporters of the Plaza hailed it as a shining example of urban renewal that reclaimed a deteriorated inner-city district in the South End known as "the gut."
View of the Empire State Plaza site during demolition on Feb. 3, 1964, in Albany.
If anyone cared to challenge the governor's proposal, the law of eminent domain was on his side and allowed for the legal seizure by the state of private property in the name of civic progress and public good — as long as fair market value was provided as reimbursement.
During this same period, the governor established the New York State Council on the Arts and designated the Egg as a performing arts center.
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The Plaza's critics, notably scores of people displaced by Rockefeller's plan, considered the complex a megalomaniacal land grab by a billionaire governor who used the shield of eminent domain law to construct an Ozymandian monument to himself at public expense. Rockefeller's project tore 98 acres out of the heart of Albany and displaced 9,000 people and 3,600 households by knocking down more than 1,500 homes and apartment buildings, 350 businesses, four churches and 29 taverns.
Center Square prior to the construction of South Mall in the 1960s in Albany, N.Y.
Albany-born author William Kennedy, who covered its construction as a reporter for the Times Union, called the South Mall "the consequence of one man's political will, imposed upon our time and space in spite of its incredible cost, in spite of the arrogant wastry and duplicity that........