ALBANY — Before he was U.S. attorney general, U.S. Supreme Court justice and chief U.S. prosecutor of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials, played by Alec Baldwin in a Nuremberg TV movie, Robert H. Jackson was a struggling law student living in a modest Lark Street apartment in 1912.

He shared the crowded one-bedroom unit with two classmates to split the rent.

Now, during Albany Law School's yearlong Jackson centennial celebration to honor one of its most illustrious graduates, a move is afoot to place a historic plaque on the building at 267 Lark St. Jackson lived there while he studied at the law school starting in the fall of 1911 until he finished his studies in the spring of 1912. At that time, the law school was located in a former church on State Street, near where the Alfred E. Smith building now stands.

The apartment at 267 Lark St. now houses the Amazing Wok Chinese restaurant.

"It think it's great that there's been so much interest in this," said John Q. Barrett, a professor at St. John's University School of Law and noted Jackson scholar. Barrett made a passing mention about the omission of the historic marker in a talk last Thursday during a panel discussion on Jackson's time in Albany. A swirl of behind-the-scenes activity with civic leaders and the law school was set in motion.

"There's something great about reading a marker of a young nobody who went onto greatness in a spot that everyone in the neighborhood is familiar with," said Barrett, who has written extensively about Jackson's career and serves as a fellow at the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, Chautauqua County.

Bob Jackson, a farm boy, came to Albany Law at 19 after an apprenticeship at a Jamestown law firm. He earned 90s in his classes at Albany Law, despite distractions. He met and courted Irene Gerhardt. She was a cousin of a law school classmate who worked as a secretary for New York's commissioner of excise in the state Capitol and lived in a boarding house on South Hawk Street.

For their first date, they went ice skating on the frozen lake in Washington Park, two blocks from his apartment at the corner of Lark and Hudson Avenue. The couple married on April 24, 1916, at St. Peter's Episcopal Church on State Street downtown. Gerhardt was still working for the state at the time, and lived with her mother in Albany while Jackson was struggling to establish a law practice in Jamestown.

Word of the Justice Jackson connection was news to the owner of the Amazing Wok.

"This is the first I heard of it," said Danny Yeung, proprietor of the Chinese restaurant and owner since 1986 of the three-story, four-apartment building. He said he'd gladly support putting a Jackson plaque on his building.

"It's very interesting," said Yeung, who first heard about Albany as a youngster living in the Netherlands and working in his dad's restaurant, which served Chinese and Indonesian specialties. He worked in family restaurants in Long Island and Brooklyn before deciding to move to the 17th-century Dutch colony he learned about in Holland.

Officials at Albany Law School have agreed to help underwrite the cost of a bronze plaque, similar to dozens that Historic Albany Foundation has placed on private homes and buildings across the city over the past 30 years.

"We're excited about this effort to honor one of our most esteemed graduates," said David Singer, an Albany Law School spokesman. "A plaque at his apartment would help bring him down to earth. People would see that even a great legal thinker like Jackson started in a humble spot."

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There are no city code restrictions and with the property owner on board, it is on a fast track. "This is the fastest I've ever seen one of these move," said Susan Holland, executive director of Historic Albany Foundation.

"We're thrilled to discover somebody so distinguished lived on Lark Street," said Mary Spinelli, executive director of the Lark Street BID. The merchant group has not placed historic plaques in the past, but Jackson may set a precedent for other famous Lark Street denizens.

"It's a nice way to illuminate the history of the city," said city historian Tony Opalka, who lived at 269 Lark St. while he was a graduate student. The 267 Lark St. building was built in 1850. Jackson is listed as living at the address on a 1912 city directory. At that time, the ground-floor space was a corner grocery, Ballantine & Voltz. It was later an A&P and Capitol Food Market before Amazing Wok moved in.

pgrondahl@timesunion.com • 518-454-5623 • @PaulGrondahl