This stone fortress on Eagle Street holds the seat of government for the city of Albany, New York. It houses the office of the mayor, the Common Council chamber, the city and traffic courts, as well as other city services. The present building was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson in the Romanesque style and opened in 1883 at 24 Eagle Street, between Corning Place, then called Maiden Lane, and Pine Street.
You can take in its rectangular, three-and-a-half-story massing as your feet find the sidewalk. At the southwest corner rises a 202-foot-tall tower, a landmark in stone and shadow. That tower contains one of the few municipal carillons in the country, dedicated in 1927 with 49 bells, an instrument that anchors the building to its civic life.
Your eyes can travel back through centuries from this 1883 landmark to the city’s earlier seat of government: the Dutch Stadt Huys, built at what is now the intersection of Broadway and Hudson Avenue, probably in the 1660s and likely replaced around 1740. In 1754 that earlier Stadt Huys hosted the Albany Congress, where Benjamin Franklin presented the Albany Plan of Union, the first proposal to unite the British American colonies. Find the tower rising at the corner, then follow Eagle Street toward Corning Place and Pine Street.