The empire state’s museum in Albany is a program by the University of the State of New York relying completely on donations to operate, which means it’s free. The museum is a horseshoe loop around the first floor of the building, the floors upstairs are occupied by the state archive and state library.
It begins with an archeological study of Albany where the first Europeans to arrive were the Dutch. Fort Orange, today a highway interchange, was the foothold of the Dutch West India Company in the region. Then, visitors are brought into the Adirondack Forest where large-scale logging took place leading to erosion of topsoil, there’s also a gallery of minerals and animals.
At the end of all the nature stuff, visitors will quickly realize that the museum isn’t in chronological order because the native people’s gallery is located next to the ice age gallery after an exhibit of a 1927 car next to a memorial trailer for 9/11. The final third of the museum is on modern people New York in the last two centuries and the developments they’ve made in the famous metropolis and beyond. Post-Civil War New York City blossomed with ocean trade where over 65% of all imports and 30% of exports passed through New York Harbour. Steel skyscrapers sprouted from between old masonry buildings, Art Deco was in vogue, and the rich settled on Fifth Avenue by the 1920s.
It’s free, it’s large and well worth a visit.
