At the intersection of State Street and Broadway in Albany, the Old Post Office, also known as the United States Government Building, waits for you. From this exact spot you can imagine the long effort that led to the structure before you: plans were drawn up two decades before construction began, but time and the costs of acquiring the land changed those plans. Instead of the larger Gothic Revival building first envisioned, a smaller post office in the Italian Renaissance Revival style was erected between 1879 and 1883 at a cost of $627,148.
For many years it served postal and federal needs; postal operations moved to larger facilities prior to 1972, and the building continued to house federal government offices for a few years after that. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and later became a contributing property to the Downtown Albany Historic District when that district was listed in 1980. Since 1977 it has been part of SUNY Plaza and is used as offices by the central administration of the State University of New York.
Notice the open, grassy plaza just south of the building.