Albany is the capital and oldest city in the U.S. state of New York and the seat of and the most populous city in the county of the same name. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about 10 miles (16 km) south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about 135 miles (220 km) north of New York City.
Rensselaer Lake is an artificial lake in Albany, New York, United States named for Major-General Stephen Van Rensselaer, last patroon of Rensselaerswyck. The lake was Albany's first municipally-owned source of water. It is part of a 57-acre (23 ha) park and the state's Albany Pine Bush Preserve. The lake and park have been under the purview of the Albany Water Authority since 2003.
SUNY Plaza, or the H. Carl McCall SUNY Building, formerly the Delaware & Hudson Railroad Company Building, is a public office building located at 353 Broadway at the intersection with State Street in downtown Albany, New York, United States. Locally the building is sometimes referred to as "The Castle" or "D&H Plaza"; prior to the construction of the nearby Empire State Plaza it was simply "The Plaza". The central tower of the building is thirteen stories high and is capped by an 8-foot-tall (2.4 m) working weathervane that is a replica of Henry Hudson's Half Moon.
The history of Albany, New York, began long before the first interaction of Europeans with the native Indian tribes, as they had long inhabited the area. The area was originally inhabited by an Algonquian Indian tribe, the Mohicans, as well as the Iroquois, five nations of whom the easternmost, the Mohawk, had the closest relations with traders and settlers in Albany.
Thomas Michael Whalen III, also known as Tom Whalen, was an American attorney and politician, and a three-term mayor of Albany, New York, serving from 1983 to 1993. A native of Albany, he graduated from Manhattan College and Albany Law School.
Union Station, also known as Albany Union Station, is a building in Albany, New York, on the corner of Broadway and Steuben Street. Built during 1899–1900, it served originally as the city's railroad station but now houses credit union offices. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) during 1971.
The Dongan Charter is the 1686 document incorporating Albany, New York, as a city. Albany's charter was issued by Governor Thomas Dongan of the Province of New York, a few months after Governor Dongan issued a similarly worded, but less detailed charter for the city of New York. The city of Albany was created three years after Albany County. The charter is the oldest existing city charter still in force in the United States. According to Stefan Bielinski, former senior historian of the New York State Museum, the charter is also "arguably the longest-running instrument of municipal government in the Western Hemisphere." In 1936 the United States Congress commemorated the charter's 250th anniversary by minting a half dollar coin.
The coat of arms of Albany, New York, is the heraldic symbol representing the city of Albany, the capital of the U.S. state of New York. The coat of arms is rarely seen by itself; it is almost always used in the city seal or on the city flag. The current coat of arms was adopted in 1789, although prior to that it was significantly simpler, ranging from stylized lettering to a caricature of a beaver. Included in the coat of arms are references to Albany's agricultural and fur-trading past. It is supported by a white man and an American Indian and is crested by a sloop. The coat of arms is meant to represent the "symbols of industry and its rewards to man and beast on land and sea".
Downtown Schenectady is the central business district for the city of Schenectady, New York. It originated in the 1820s with the moving of the commercial and industrial interests east from the original 17th and 18th century settlement, spurred on by the development of the Erie Canal. Home to the headquarters and major manufacturing plants of two large corporations, General Electric and American Locomotive Company, Downtown Schenectady catered to tens of thousands of workers in its heyday. Typical of the post-industrial Northeastern United States and Upstate New York in particular, Downtown Schenectady saw a decline in manufacturing and population starting in the 1970s. Recent construction and renovation has caused the downtown area to become an entertainment mecca for New York's Capital District anchored by Proctor's Theatre.
The architecture of Albany, New York, embraces a variety of architectural styles ranging from the early 18th century to the present. The city's roots date from the early 17th century and few buildings survive from that era or from the 18th and early 19th century. The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 triggered a building boom, which continued until the Great Depression and the suburbanization of the area afterward. This accounts for much of the construction in the city's urban core along the Hudson River. Since then most construction has been largely residential, as the city spread out to its current boundaries, although there have been some large government building complexes in the modernist style, such as Empire State Plaza, which includes the Erastus Corning Tower, the tallest building in New York outside of New York City.
North Albany is a neighborhood in the city of Albany, New York. North Albany was settled in the mid-17th century by the Patroon of Rensselaerswyck and his tenants and later became a hamlet in the town of Watervliet. Due to the Erie Canal being constructed in 1825, North Albany saw immense growth, with the Albany Lumber District and an influx of Irish immigrants lending the area the name of Limerick. Home to many historic warehouses and row houses, North Albany continues to be an important industrial neighborhood. Recent efforts have begun to gentrify the neighborhood by adapting heavy industry/warehouse use to artistic and entertainment venues, such as a German beer garden, an amusement park, live music venues, and arts and crafts marketplaces.
Pine Hills is a neighborhood in Albany, New York, generally defined as the area from Manning Boulevard to the west, Woodlawn Avenue to the south, Lake Avenue to the east, and Washington Avenue to the north. The neighborhood consists mainly of freestanding multi-unit, duplex, and semi-detached houses and is home to Albany High School, the LaSalle school, the College of St. Rose, and the Alumni Quad of the University at Albany. Though mostly residential due to historical reasons from its founding, Pine Hills is home to two neighborhood commercial districts ; Middle Madison, from Partridge to Quail streets was designated first, and then a latter designated district, Upper Madison, from Main Avenue to North Allen Street. The area of Pine Hills east of Main Avenue and north of Myrtle Avenue is commonly referred to as the student ghetto due to its predominant population of college-age students. The area of Pine Hills west of Main Avenue features many large Queen Anne, Folk Victorian, and Colonial Revival homes. Upper Madison, where it meets Western Avenue near St. Rose is the center of a commercial area, complete with a movie theater, grocery store, fast food strip mall, retail, restaurants, a library, community playhouse, police station, pharmacy, and elementary school.
Sheridan Hollow is a neighborhood in Albany, New York located in a ravine north of Downtown Albany. Capitol Hill to the south and Arbor Hill to the north flank the ravine. Often the neighborhood is overlooked by city residents, and outsiders who work in the neighborhood often don't recognize the name of the neighborhood. This is due to the identity of the Hollow being subsumed into its larger neighbor Arbor Hill, for instance news stories of events are often accredited to the wrong neighborhood. Being on undesirable land for development in colonial times, growth was slow in the Hollow and the neighborhood was populated through the centuries by a series of ethnic groups new to Albany, such as the Irish, Polish, and African Americans.
The history of Albany, New York from 1983 to present begins with the death of Erastus Corning 2nd, Albany's longest serving mayor. When Corning died in 1983, Thomas Whalen assumed the mayorship and was reelected twice. Albany saw a significant influx of federal dollars earmarked for restoring historic structures. What Corning had saved from destruction, Whalen refurbished. The Mayor's Office of Special Events was created in an effort to increase the number of festivals and artistic events in the city, including a year-long Dongan Charter tricentennial celebration in 1986. Whalen is credited for an "unparalleled cycle of commercial investment and development" in Albany due to his "aggressive business development programs".
Lincoln Park is an urban park in Albany, New York, with a unique history, from being the site of a skirmish in 1626 between the Dutch and Mohawks to brickyards and breweries to being Albany's first public playground. The park features Albany's only outdoor non-wading swimming pool, along with several tennis courts, basketball courts, and football and baseball fields. Within the park is the James Hall Office, a National Historic Landmark, and the Thomas O'Brien Academy of Science and Technology (TOAST) an elementary school.
The Tivoli Nature Preserve, also Tivoli Park, in Albany is the largest urban nature preserve in the Capital District.
Townsend Park is a small urban park in Albany, New York. It encompasses a triangle of land formed by the Y-intersection of Central and Washington avenues, with the third (western) border formed by Henry Johnson Boulevard.
Dana Park is a small .2-acre (810 m2) urban park in Albany, New York and includes a memorial to James Dana which doubles as Albany's last remaining horse trough. It is located in the Y-intersection caused by Delaware Avenue to the east and Lark Street to the west, with the third leg of the triangle formed by Dana Avenue. Madison Avenue forms a five-point intersection with Lark Street and Delaware Avenue at the eastern end of the park. The park is important to several different neighborhoods, Hudson-Park, Park South, and Lark Street.
St. Joseph's Church is a historic neo-gothic church edifice in the Ten Broeck Triangle section of Albany, New York's Arbor Hill neighborhood. The structure is considered a city landmark and an important part of the Albany skyline. The church closed in 1994. The City of Albany placed the church for sale in February 2023.
The Central Warehouse is a former warehouse building in North Albany, a neighborhood of Albany, New York. The building was a refrigeration warehouse built in 1927, 11 stories tall, with 40,000 square feet (3,700 m2) of space. The structure is considered a landmark of the community and city. The building has a rail line that enters the second floor and the walls are 3 feet (0.91 m) thick concrete. In 1981 the building began to have signs placed on it seen from I-787, and in 1983 one in particular "Year of the Bible" received numerous complaints and the state began proceedings to have it removed. The signs violated the Federal Highway Beautification Act and were removed in 1986. Previous signs from 1981 to 1983 were not disputed by the state because Albany Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd had personally approved them and the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) chose not to enforce the law since it would be against Corning's wishes, Corning died in 1983. In 1996 the building, which by then had been abandoned, was found to have up to 18 inches (460 mm) of ice built up on some floors. The ice was believed was keeping the ammonia of the refrigeration system from expanding, bursting pipes, and being released into the atmosphere. The building was abandoned in the early 1990s. The ammonia was subsequently drained from the pipes. On October 22, 2010, a fire began in the warehouse and lasted for days, the current owners claimed no structural damage was done to the building and that plans to renovate the building into a residential and retail complex were still possible, over $1 million had already been invested in cleaning the insides of the building. The City of Albany declared a state of emergency on July 29, 2022 after chunks of the building's concrete wall began to fall near the train tracks below. Amtrak, who uses this portion of the track for service west of Albany, temporarily suspended use of the track. On August 1, after the city made emergency repairs to the crumbling wall, Amtrak resumed use of the track. The building's owner was billed by the city for the repair costs.
