Pinhole Image: Former D&H Building

Pinhole Image:

Former D&H Building, now the SUNY System Administration Building
Albany New York

This pinhole image was made using a homemade camera — lanything light-tight can become a camera. The photo captures spring foliage rising around the building’s Gothic tower, a soft impression of a structure with a long and layered history.

History of the Building:

The D&H Building was completed in 1914 for the Delaware and Hudson Railroad Company and designed by Albany architect Marcus T. Reynolds. Its French Gothic Revival design — with turrets, stone carvings, and cathedral-like windows — gave the railroad a headquarters that looked more like a castle than an office.

It later became home to the Albany Evening Journal, tying it to the city’s media history as well. In the 1970s, the State University of New York acquired the building, converting it into the SUNY System Administration headquarters.

Hidden Details in the Sculptures:

Every detail carved into the stone tells a story. This isn’t just decoration — it’s a record of the people, industries, and institutions that once moved through these halls.

Look closely, and you’ll see figures worked into the stone: newsboys, railroad workers, and office clerks — everyday faces that reflect the building’s original tenants. Gargoyles and grotesques appear around corners and beneath ledges, some in traditional medieval forms, others with a more local character, almost cartoonish in expression.

There are sculpted trains and sections of track woven into the architectural flourishes, subtle nods to the Delaware & Hudson Railroad that commissioned the building in 1914. Faces carved into keystones may represent company executives, construction workers, or even the architect himself, Marcus T. Reynolds.

When the Albany Evening Journal also occupied the building, additional symbols found their way into the design — quills, typebars, and printing press motifs, still visible today if you know where to look.

Together, these carvings form a kind of visual archive. They anchor the building to Albany’s industrial and journalistic past — a physical record of the railroad men, newspaper staff, and city leaders who once passed through its doors.

Episode one of the Restoration Obscura Field Guide podcast is a primer on how to read the city like a history book. You can listen now on Spotify or any major streaming platform. A new episode drops Monday, May 5.

You can listen at: www.restorationobscura.com