Our billboard at 1201 Broadway, North Albany, NY "No Room For Desert? How Bout A Room For The Night?"

With the year drawing to a close, we’re filled with gratitude for our growing community and excitement to share a few words from our Founding Director & President, David Gersten, about a special milestone that celebrates where we’ve come from and the exciting future ahead.

STOP. And that is exactly what I did. I paused and stood on the corner of Broadway and North First Street, absorbing an experience at least 50 years in the making. This photograph captures a moment on one of the prime corners of my youth. That building, 1201 Broadway, in North Albany, NY. —once my family's truck shop—where I grew up, spending my days from age 8 to 18 working on the loading dock, fixing truck parts, sweeping, and mopping the entire place every night. Now, decades later, I stood looking up, marveling at the transformation. Hanging above that same building is a billboard for La Perla / The Gregory House, the latest expansion of our Arts Letters and Numbers campus.

The echoes of craft and community from those early years have taken a new form—now embedded in ALN, in Craft 101, and in the hopes and aspirations of the young people in our programs. Standing there, on this corner that once defined my childhood, I felt the arrow of time bending back through this very spot, as though past and present were having a quiet conversation.

I couldn’t help but laugh when I noticed the crooked street sign announcing “Albany New York.” The slant of that sign felt like a nod to the imperfect yet beautifully persistent journey that has brought me—and this place—to where we are today. Someday, this too, 1201 Broadway will become part of our campus, another loop in the ever-expanding circles. 
 

– David Gersten