Picture a 150-car parking lot where this whole block now sits, cleared in 1986 to mark Albany's three hundredth year as an incorporated city. This is a place of statues and monuments, laid out across the entire block bounded by Broadway to the east, Columbia Street to the north, James Street to the west, and Steuben Street to the south. The idea for a park here goes back to 1914, when architect Arnold W. Brunner and landscape architect Charles Downing Lay published their master plan under the title Stvdies for Albany; they imagined this site as a gateway for visitors arriving by train at the Albany Union Station across the street.
What you see now was built in 1986 on what had been a 150–car surface parking lot, part of the celebrations of Albany’s 300th anniversary of becoming a city incorporated under the Dongan Charter, and associated with the renovation of the Albany Union Station. Originally Corning Park behind City Hall was to carry the Tricentennial Park name, but that was dropped. Broadway runs along your right, Columbia Street lies straight ahead, James Street sits to your left, and Steuben Street closes the block behind you.