Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Albany City Hall/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Karanacs 14:34, 3 November 2010.

Albany City Hall

 * Nominator(s):  upstate NYer  21:34, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

This article was recently elevated to GA, though because the review came with no comments, I felt it necessary to initiate a peer review as well, which just recently finished. I believe this is a complete article; I have exhausted available mainstream sources, including accessing a couple books from the local library system. The building is listed on the NRHP, so its nomination form offered much of the content, though numerous local history books supplemented that.  upstate NYer  21:34, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Sources comments
 * Comment - no dead external links, one double redirect (Stadt Huys). Nikkimaria (talk) 23:24, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Where is the redirect? I tried to find it during the Peer Review and I couldn't. Has anybody else seen evidence of it anywhere other than the dablinks checker?  upstate NYer  15:09, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The WhatLinksHere page for Stadt Huys indicates that there is a link from this article to that page. I can't find it in the article, though - quite odd. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:28, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Found it! It's in the Albany template at the bottom of the page. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:29, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Notes 1, 3 and 4: You need to give a source for these present-day value figures
 * Comment: These notes appear to use Template:Inflation. I'm not sure if that needs to be cited. --Gyrobo (talk) 03:00, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree with Gyrobo. That's implicit.  upstate NYer  03:48, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Why is this particular method "implicit"? There are various ways of calculating current value, e.g. Measuringworth.com, which don't all produce the same result. Sources need to be explicitly stated. I am not saying you should change your source, merely that you should define it. Brianboulton (talk) 08:39, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Inflation uses as its US source. It seems implicit to me that, if the template is used, its references are likewise used. We could stick it in the article anyway, but articles which use that template don't seem to do that. --Gyrobo (talk) 14:57, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * You're using CPI inflation on capital goods? That's opposable in itself as bad research. Fifelfoo (talk) 15:07, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm not an economist. But the template claims it converts the value of currency between two years. Commodities and construction materials have value based on currency. So if the value of said materials were worth something in currency at one point, one would assume that converting that currency value is about as accurate as can be.  upstate NYer  15:12, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * This seems more like an issue for Template talk:Inflation. The template itself has been consistently used in articles without citations given, because it is expected to just work. It's the same reason citations aren't given after templates like Convert.

(inset) If you are saying that it's OK to use this template without attribution because other articles do, that doesn't wash. Neither does the "implicit" argument. I repeat: there is more than one authoritative procedure for computing present-day value. It is essential that your general readers (not just other Wikipedeans who know about inflation templates) should know where your present-day figures come from, and the basis used. All you need do is add a note in your notes section which gives them this information. The argument about whether CPI inflation is appropriate for capital goods is a separate issue from proper citation, which is what I am concerned with here. Brianboulton (talk) 20:42, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Tiny nitpick: no spaces around dashes in page ranges. Thus (ref 3) 346–347, not 346 – 347. See also ref 17.
 * I went and fixed that. --Gyrobo (talk) 03:23, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Forgot to run the dash script.  upstate NYer  03:48, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Otherwises all sources look OK. Brianboulton (talk) 23:25, 16 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Comments 2c: 2c is beautiful except for a bug lodged with citemap on failing to meet documented style with terminal fullstops. I tried handrolling a fix, but citemap throws breaking spaces. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:09, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * What's the issue with the map citations?  upstate NYer  03:50, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Newly introduced material (ie: stuff only cited in the notes), ends with a terminal full-stop/periods. The map citations are newly introduced material but don't end with terminal full-stops.  Placing a full-stop after the cite doesn't work, because the cite map template throws forced spaces after the final entry in the template, leading to it looking like "Author Data ." instead of "Author Data.".  cite map's documentation claims it uses terminal periods, but it fails to do so correctly, see example five in the template's own documentation.  I've lodged a bug with the template's talk page.  Given that this is an issue outside of control, which should be fixed when they fix the template, it shouldn't be construed as a blemish on the great 2c work here. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:58, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Gotcha. Naturally, I agree with your final assessment. :)  upstate NYer  04:27, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Comments 1c: Opposable on Inflation. Capital goods cannot be inflated by a Consumer Price Index.  inflation is relatively honest about what it does, it "applies to [a price] the country's consumer price inflation until "recently"".  Capital goods can't be inflated by a consumer price measure.  1832 capital good (land) $10,295.95.;  1832 capital good (building construction) $92,000; 1927 (carillon) $63,000.  You also have three other capital goods costs for architecture and construction in the 1880s and shortly thereafter.  Remarkably, Measuring Worth has just the device to calculate this measure, "Share of US GDP", Measuring inflation on a project "A "project". If the amount you are asking about is the construction of a church, the cost of a war, or a new highway, again the context is important. If the question is how much it cost compared to the present cost of materials or labor, you would use the GDP deflator  and/or the wage or earning index. However, you may be more interested in how important this project was to the community or the country. In the past there were less amounts of materials and labor available for all projects. So to measure the importance of this project (compares to other projects) use the share of GDP indicator."  We aren't talking about the cost of rebuilding the object today, but the social opportunity cost of investment.  For the 1832 figure, Samuel H. Williamson (April 2010) "Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1774 to present," MeasuringWorth. calculates the 1832 cost of $10,295.95 as a share of the US GDP in 2009 terms as $131 million dollars.  The figure given in the article is currently $210,000 based on a CPI.  The next time I see commercial land investment in my consumption bundle, I'll remember to eat some dirt.  (I won't get into the problem of market non-existence here, but 1832 is just late enough, and your setting is sufficiently marketised and monetised for me to avoid this moment of pedantry).  The solution is to go to MW using Share of GDP, and cite MW correctly, and indicate the calculation method used. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:53, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * There's a diff here if you'd like to have inflated values, it uses share of GDP as correct for exertion required to produce capital goods reflected in current equivalent economic exertion. It appears to be cited correctly.  Could you let me know if the $184, $185 and $204 thousand dollar figures are from a year other than 1880. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:13, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Years can be seen here.  upstate NYer  00:22, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment Inflation templates removed. While I think they are a positive attribute of the article to offer the casual reader a better understanding of the content, it's not worth failing an FAC for it. Now, can we get back to the real content of the article, please?  upstate NYer  23:49, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Fifelfoo inserted his/her interpretation of the dollar amounts. Thank you.  upstate NYer  01:03, 18 October 2010 (UTC)


 * image comment Assuming that the stuff shown in File:RichardsonAlbanyCH3.jpg dates from the 19th century fine.©Geni 02:59, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
 * All stone work was done in between 1881 and 1883.  upstate NYer  03:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment
 * I haven't read everything that is written here. I'm just going to crash in and disagree with the following:
 * Save for the bold asymmetrical placement of the tower (which is a prime example of Richardson's disregard for architectural correctness and known for being one of his best tower designs), the building is noted for its general simplicity in design. The entranceway is a simple triple-arch loggia; other design elements on the front façade are limited to its windows and a quadruple-arch balcony off the Common Council chamber. The building is simultaneously noted for its general simplicity and care for small details, especially its intricate carvings.[18] The entranceway is flanked by multiple tiers of relief sculpture and gargoyles.[23]
 * The tower is stated elsewhere to be Venetian in inspiration. Under those circumstances one would expect it to be asymmetrically placed. Hence it does not show Richardson's disregard for architectural correctness. It demonstrates Richardson's use of his architectural vocabulary to place the tower at the point at which it is going to have the greatest impact on the streetscape. The profile Of Albany City Hall juts forward a little from the other buildings on Eagle St. This adds to its effectiveness.  The tower forms a counterpoint to the corner pavilions of the New York State Capitol.  This is not accidental. Richardson is creating a tension between the buildings. Its a pity he didn't grab the corner building on the other diagonal axis and come up with something equally dramatic.
 * General simplicity in design. No. As far as Romanesque goes, and as far as Richardson goes, this building is not simple. In form maybe, since it is almost a cube, with a tower ang gables, but certainly not in its achitectonic devices.
 * 1. The whole surface is heavily and elaborately rusticated. The rustications on the tower form a regular and pre-planned pattern which gives a great overall richness of surface.
 * 2. All the architectural features are in contrasting stone of a rich colour.
 * 3. There is an additional parquetry of stone in the gables and over lintels.
 * 4. Every window in the building is of a complex form, and these forms vary, not only from floor to floor but from face to face of the building and across the same level. A comparison with the NY State Capitol shows that in this latter building the same main window shape is repeated over several floors.
 * 5. The architect has utilised all the significant decorative features available within the Romanesque vocabulary. The deep portals have strongly projecting shafts around the supporting piers, which create rippling light and shadow. The upper loggia has clusters of shafts, rather than simple smooth pillars.
 * 6. Each colonnette has a richly carved capital. The columns of the lower loggia rise into richly sculptured moldings.
 * 7. Above all the larger arches Richardson has invested the building with decorative drip mouldings, finished with carved bosses at every terminal or joint. Even the little roof over the stair turret at the corner of the tower is equipped with a circlet of bosses.
 * The caption to an illustration reads City hall has intricate stonework, but because of its small size, it is a secondary design feature compared to the generally simple overall building design.
 * When one refers to "stonework" this ususlly means "masonry". I think you mean stone carving.
 * It isn't a "secondary design feature". The carvings are integrated with the forms that they decorate. ie. Wherever there is a boss (at every corner of a moulding) it demands to be carved. Likewise, wherever there is a capital (on the top of every on of those colonettes) it demands to be carved.
 * This sentence again states that the overall building design is "generally simple".
 * Let me emphasise again that while the form of the building is a basic box, nothing else about it is "simple", not even its roof structure, which is far more complex than it probably needs to be. This building has an abundance, one might almost say an over-abundance, of architectonic elaboration in the Romanesque manner. All the design choices that the architect has made, such as the shafts, the mouldings, the parquetry, the varied windows, have led to elaboration. As ones eye moves across the building, there is no point of repose.
 * A telling comparison is with Cincinnati City Hall, a much larger building, also rusticated and polychrome, but with very much simpler treatment of its many windows. Royce Hall at the university of California is a good example of simple Romanesque REvival on a large scale.
 * If the building is heritage listed, then someone at some time has probably written about this.
 * Amandajm (talk) 10:56, 2 November 2010 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.