I suffer from rare but inevitable bouts of nostalgia wherein I grasp backwards through time so far that I fall clear off the internet. For instance, it is impossible to find a photo of the crystal cavern display that used to be one of my favorites at the (old) New York State Museum.
I grew up in a small town outside the state capital of Albany and was from an early age hauled out on school trips to be edified and cultured up by visiting the New York State Museum. As a kindergartner, the most interesting thing in the museum was what the black light in the otherwise darkened coat room did to our shoelaces and teeth. In third grade, along with everyone else I made it a point to surreptitiously lick the giant pillar of rock salt in the Hall of Rocks and Minerals just like our teachers told us all we should absolutely not do because even though the rock really was salt, licking it was dirty and disgusting. Note to posterity: the teachers are right, it totally DOES taste just like salt.
In sixth grade, the budding scientist in me was quite taken by a display of fluorescing minerals as shown in a display alternating daylight and then black light (apparently I had a thing for black lights). By the time I was a preteen, I was making a beeline for the Crystal Cave any time I got within range of the Hall of Rocks and Minerals. It was strange, it was beautiful, it was limitless, it was mysterious, and it was where Merlin had dreamed his dreams in Mary Stewart's recently published Arthurian cycle novel The Crystal Cave.
Technically, the display was called The Calcite Cave. It was an ambitious and at the time sophisticated reproduction of a tremendous crystal find made in 1906 during quarrying operations in remote northern New York State. Investigating a small opening that appeared some 20 feet up in a quarry wall, geologists discovered a crystal-lined cavity roughly 10 feet wide and 5 feet high that ran back 20 feet before turning, narrowing and finally becoming impassible.
The amethystine calcite crystals lining the cave were "of extraordinary size, perfection and beauty." From the 1918 Annual Report of the New York State Museum:
"The crystals lined the cavern completely, attached at the sides but on the bottom lying free, and their size was most impressive. Some were immense, probably among the largest ever found, while the greater part of the exposed surface of the cave bore superb crystals, deeply colored of an amethystine violet, and the interstices were filled with clusters of smaller but perfect crystallizations."
12 to 14 tons of crystals were removed from the cave before quarrying continued, of which ten tons were used in reproducing the cavern for the "new" (established 1912) New York State Museum.
Lewis County, my birthplace and also the area where the Calcite Cave was found, was a land of mineralogical discovery and wealth from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s. Although you'd never know it to look at Lewis County today, it was a bit of an economic and scientific powerhouse in its heyday. The New York State Museum, located further south at the center of political power in Albany had, in fact, as its focus mineralogical and natural history. Thus, a great deal of effort and technical acumen went into preserving this "brilliant grotto," this "extraordinary aggregation" of crystals as a display for the State Museum:
"The door and brick work were torn away from the side of a small room that opened into the museum. In this room was constructed a strong steel framework about the same shape, and one half the size, of the original cavern. The top of this steel cage was securely fastened to a iron girder by a truss rod and turnbuckle in order to lessen the strain on the floor. Ten decimeters up from the bottom of the framework a solid flooring was laid, and upon this the larger crystals were set, in a mixture of plaster of Paris and excelsior, space being provided behind each large crystal for an electric light … Smaller crystals were then attached to the sides and top … Great care was necessary in fitting the various crystals together and it was three months before this part of the work was completed. Two mirrors, cleverly concealed in opposite corners, give the effect of the smaller, more contracted portion of the cavern."
(From http://www.minsocam.org/ammin/AM5/AM5_3.pdf)
One of the architects of this effort, Noah T. Clarke, explained the manner of the illusion as follows:
"... careful detailed study of the project had to be assumed and worked out by those skilled in many arts. A blind closet about 8 feet square beneath an arch in the mineral hall seemed a likely place for such an exhibit but the difficulty in this was to obtain in such a small space the depth required by the original cave. After much experiment it was found that by placing upright a plate glass mirror … we could produce an apparent depth of 25 feet and a gradual slope down to a narrow passage, as in the original. With this arrangement the spectator could not see his own image or the ordinary visitor detect a mirror."
(New York State Legislative Documents, Vol. 31 (1920) pp 223-224 via Google)
As a child, the Crystal Cave was just a smallish (2' x 2') window (with a step stool in front for those requiring such accommodation) into a blazing, limitless wonderland of color and light. I always wanted to crawl right into the cave and sleep, like the young Merlin, on its beautiful, sharp stones; I was always stopped by the pane of glass between us. That was my first notion of injustice. How could they let me see such beauty but then not permit me to explore it fully? And so I became a caver, but that's just a side passage.
Let's take a look at the building where they had to knock out a wall and build special trusses to hold the ten tons of crystals making up the Calcite Cave; ladies and gentlemen, I present to you
The Albany Education Building
Although it's the state capital, Albany is not a very big town. The Education Building, the A.E. Smith Building, the State Capitol Building and the South Mall complex ring one small park. They are historical, monumental buildings but when I was growing up, they were my playground, my school and later my workplace.
These buildings are literally my dream architecture. I left New York State a long time ago and have never tried very hard to look back at my time there, but like I say, I have these intermittent bouts of nostalgia that lead me to find certain images on the web that I realize are to this day the floor plan and architecture of my dreams . . .
Albany's State Education Building, as it is known, was completed in 1912. Albany Times-Union journalist Casey Seiler explains the building's original purpose:
" ... as a showplace for a bureaucracy that had only recently undergone major change. After years of reform efforts, the Unification Act of 1904 merged leadership of New York's elementary education and the upper levels — including high school as well as colleges, universities and academies — under the Board of Regents, creating the modern State Education Department."
(http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Majesty-of-education-3946430.php#photo-3589190) 10/15/2012
I'll only steal one photo from the article, the one of the stairs. I used to run up and down these every day when I worked as a temporary file clerk in the empty library stacks on the third floor in the 1980s. I could have taken the elevator, but with stairs like these, are you kidding?
This is actually a really bad picture of the stairs. It's not even a good picture of my memory of the stairs. However, you have to understand that that kind of monumental architecture is more easily experienced than photographed. Frankly, I'm thrilled to see any picture of the stairs at all.
Journalist Seiler quotes an area resident who visited the museum in grade school:
""It used to be a class trip every year," said Parslow, who now works on the fifth floor — just steps from the former site of the log home — as an education program assistant." See?! I was right! They brought us every year.
Seiler goes on to say, "Walking through State Ed, it's easy those who work in more modern office buildings to feel a little jealous of those who get to spend their workday around such grand spaces."
You got that right, girl (or guy). There never was another one like State Ed back in the day. True, during the time I worked there I never tried to penetrate the Fifth Floor where the Old Museum lay, and where they were dismantling , or had dismantled, Merlin's secret lair, the Sterlingbush Calcite Cave.
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