Gander, Gander, & Gander—Albany Architects

Free with museum admission

The office of Gander, Gander, & Gander, was active from 1912 until 1982 and was among Albany’s most prominent architectural firms during much of that time. Architectural Historian Walter R. Wheeler will present the firm’s history and its origins in area firms dating back to the 1840s and up to its closure in the early 1980s. While best known today as the designers of the Art Deco styled Federal Courthouse and Post Office on Broadway, the firm was responsible for more than 700 projects located throughout New York State and elsewhere, including designs for buildings in Los Angeles, CA, Washington, D.C., Hartford, CT, and Carey, OH. The Ganders’ extensive work for the Albany Catholic Diocese will be explored, as will their planning proposals for the City of Albany, executed between 1919 and 1959.

This talk will take advantage of the unusually complete project logs of the firm, which are now in the collection of the Albany Institute, together with drawings, photographs, and scrapbooks generated by the firm.

The program is co-sponsored by the Turpin Bannister Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians.

[American Architect and Architecture, October 1936. Albany Institute of History & Art, Gander, Gander, and Gander Collection, gift of John A. Gander, HE80-03, B1, F2]

 

About the Speaker

Walter R. Wheeler is Senior Architectural Historian at Hartgen Archeological Associates where he has worked since 1999 on projects throughout the northeast for both private and institutional clients. Previously he worked for the Office of the State Architect and Wagoner & Reynolds Architects, and subsequently in private practice as a restoration architect and as an adjunct professor at SUNY New Paltz (as Project Director of the Hudson Valley Study Center) and at Hamilton College.  He has given many public presentations and has authored approximately 100 scholarly articles and three monographs on New York State architecture. Wally is President of the Turpin Bannister Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians and is a founding member and officer of Hudson-Mohawk Vernacular Architecture and edits their newsletter. He has sat on the Albany County Historical Association’s board since 2004 and recently completed an 11-year term as Chair of Troy’s Historic Review Commission.

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