California Rambling: Capital to capital

As state capitals, Albany, N.Y., and Sacramento have a lot in common, but also a lot that sets them apart.  These bi-coastal capitals of the third and first most populous states in the nation are worthy destinations, not just for government workers, but for anyone fascinated with America’s story.

Must-see destinations in both cities are their capitols, each of which is maintained with care. The New York state capitol is undergoing extensive renovation that has jammed its stone interior with scaffolding. A seven-year restoration of California’s capitol was completed in 1982 with historical offices preserved for public viewing. Both capitols offer free, midweek, docent-guided tours: California on the hour between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.; New York at 10 a.m., Noon, 2 and 3 p.m.

The two capitols were constructed in similar times (Sacramento’s from 1861 to 1874 and Albany’s from 1867 to 1899), though with very different results.  Sacramento’s is a white wedding cake of a capitol reminiscent of the U.S. Capitol with a neoclassical façade, dome and brightly colored interiors. In 1952, an ever-expanding state government – more concerned about convenience than beauty – added a terminally plain annex of offices, marring the capitol’s beauty by removing a Roman-influenced semi-circular apse that originally graced the capitol’s east side.

Albany’s capitol began as a distinctive Romanesque structure, yet similar to Sacramento’s capitol its classical form was modified to fit succeeding architectural fashion, incorporating Renaissance Classical and Victorian Romanesque lines. The result is an imposing, yet confused castle, that contains a labyrinth of dark stone corridors that are lit dimly by gilded fixtures and that lead to offices and chambers, all designed to evoke power and authority.

Surrounding California’s capitol, state government offices are distributed among commercial office buildings and non-descript governmental buildings. Not so in Albany. There, New York’s pattern of ever-larger government buildings crowd near the capitol. The State Education Building, a massive Beaux Arts Parthenon, dominates the capitol’s eastern side, its 36 corinthian columns comprising one of the longest colonnades in the world. To the north, the 34-story, Alfred E. Smith State Office Building, which when it was completed in 1928 was the most expensive public building of its time, is an austere art-deco monument to the state that perfected the skyscraper. And to the capitol’s west rises incongruously an epic modernist space.

At a cost of around $2 billion, Empire State Plaza was built from 1959 to 1976 after Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller  – embarrassed over having to drive Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands through city slums to the Executive Mansion – determined that New York needed “the most electrifying capital in the world” and set about to build it.

With great controversy at the time, 9,000 city residents — many of them ethnic minorities (Italians and Jews) — were displaced to free 98.5 acres for the new government center.  The result is a vast space where five marble and steel modernist high rises, courthouses, an egg-shaped concert hall, underground retail concourse and a grand blockhouse of a museum surround three expansive reflecting pools, in an architectural statement that declares emphatically Rockefeller’s grand vision. Punctuating the impression is a collection of modern art that is found throughout the plaza, including works by such giants as Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock and Robert Goodnough.

What Gov. Rockefeller created was not just a place of substance in which New York state’s governmental agencies would be housed, but a new cultural destination. The impressive New York State Museum which dominates the west end of Empire State Plaza is visited by more than 700,000 visitors each year, making it one of New York’s most-visited cultural attractions.

State capitals are natural places to concentrate state museums. Sacramento has 20 of them, including the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento State Railroad Museum, Sacramento History Museum, and the California Museum. Though, the scale of the NY State Museum and its position anchoring Empire State Plaza opposite the state capitol accent its importance to New York like no other.

The similarities and differences between these two coastal capitals are remarkable. Both Sacramento and Albany share transportation legacies: Sacramento was where the transcontinental railroad and Pony Express began and the California Trail ended, and Albany was the turnpike hub of New York State, where Robert Fulton initiated steamship service from New York, and as starting point of the Erie Canal. As river cities, Sacramento and Albany each prospered because of access to the Hudson and Sacramento rivers. Today, those rivers provide recreational diversion to the capitals: with amphibious boat cruises and historical ship tours in Albany and dinner cruises and historical riverboats in Sacramento.

Where Sacramento has restored Old Sacramento into a tourist district that resembles its heyday as a jumping off point for ‘49ers on their way to the gold fields, Albany is preserving its 19^th--century streetscapes, which appear as if a company of blue-coated New York Volunteers might have just marched past.  There to, there are similarities. New York’s heavy role in supplying troops and materiel to the Civil War is brought home inside its capitol where the nation’s largest collection of state battle flags is cased. Battle ribbons hanging from the furled standards identify places New Yorkers fought from the War of 1812 to the present, including Gettysburg. Similarly, California’s involvement from the Mexican-American War to the War on Terrorism is seen in and near its capital city at the California State Military Museum and Aerospace Museum of California.

Though it might seem that Albany and Sacramento are geographically or historically apart, there’s a lot that ties these capital cities together. Each, in its own right, is an intriguing and satisfying place to explore. One is but a few miles away, the other a continent apart, but visiting both is worth the journey.

For more about Albany and Sacramento, visit Albany.org and DiscoverGold.org.

John Poimiroo of El Dorado Hills is a travel writer who specializes in California destinations.