Another building in Albany, with a ghost that I’m having a hard time making sense of. It’s definitely a ghost, because you can see filled-in joist pockets on the front third of the side wall, at the same elevation as the bottom of the window.
Maybe the building that is gone was quite small. There are discolorations that suggest that maybe that building was only two stories tall and had its rear facade in line with the first window on the remaining building. Except this stumbles over the question of what the visible wall side is: a party wall or an independent wall left as a remnant of the missing building.
If it was a party wall, there’s something very odd going on where it meets the street facade. The only way I can think of to explain that recess at the first floor is that there was a ragged edge after the missing building was demolished and whoever fixed it decided, for no apparent reason, to not build the new edge vertical. If it’s an independent wall, the missing building would appear to have been the exact same size as the remaining building (there are no visible edges except at the street wall), which raises the question of where are the joist pockets above the second floor?
An important reminder when playing this game: people rarely set out to obscure ghosts, but ordinary repairs and maintenance do a good job of hiding and altering them.
