Albany, the capital of New York

A government on the run

When the Revolution began, New York’s colonial capital, New York City, fell to the British army, and the new state government had to keep moving. In April 1777 a convention at Kingston adopted the first state constitution, and on September 9, 1777, the first state Senate met there, in a house that is now the Senate House State Historic Site. Weeks later, on October 16, 1777, British troops burned Kingston.

For two decades the legislature had no fixed home. It met at Poughkeepsie, which also hosted the 1788 convention that ratified the US Constitution, at Albany, at Fishkill and elsewhere, and after the war it sat at Federal Hall in New York City.

Choosing Albany

In late 1796 lawmakers left Federal Hall planning to reconvene in Albany, and they opened their session there in January 1797. Acts passed that year made Albany the permanent capital. It had several advantages: it was central to the state, it was becoming a hub of trade and transport, and unlike New York City it was not exposed to naval attack or to the yellow fever epidemics that struck the port.

Thirty-two years of building

Ground for the New York State Capitol was broken in 1867 and the cornerstone laid in 1871, but construction dragged on through three teams of architects: first Thomas Fuller, then Leopold Eidlitz and H. H. Richardson, and finally Isaac G. Perry, with grounds designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Governor Theodore Roosevelt declared the building finished in 1899.

The granite Capitol rests on load-bearing masonry walls about five feet thick. Its hand-carved Great Western Staircase was finished in 1897, and stone carvers worked 77 portrait faces into the building, among them Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony.

The 1911 fire

In 1911 a fire destroyed the State Library and other rooms in the west end of the building.

Visiting

The Capitol is open to visitors. See the Office of General Services’ Capitol page for tour information.