100 Fun Facts About Albany

Albany sits on the Hudson about ten miles south of its confluence with which other river?

The Mohawk River joins the Hudson near Cohoes, roughly ten miles north of Albany; the city grew at the head of tidewater navigation just below that junction.

Which people originally inhabited the Albany area, calling it their nation's 'fireplace'?

The Mohicans, an Algonquian people, called the site 'the fireplace of the Mohican nation'; their villages lined both banks of the upper Hudson when Europeans arrived in 1609.

Which explorer reached the Albany area in 1609 aboard the Half Moon and claimed it for the Netherlands?

Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Netherlands' East India Company, anchored near present-day Albany in September 1609; the river carries his name.

The Dutch fort built in 1624 to replace flood-wrecked Fort Nassau was named for which royal house?

Fort Orange honoured the House of Orange-Nassau, whose princes led the revolt against Spain; the 1624 fort stood on the Hudson's west bank just south of downtown Albany.

Before the English renamed it in 1664, the Dutch village at Albany was called what?

Beverwijck, set up as a separate village in 1652, means 'beaver district'; its fur trade with the Iroquois made it the colony's chief inland market.

Albany was named in honour of the Duke of Albany, a Scottish title held by which future king?

James II, then Duke of York and Albany, was the brother of Charles II; both New York and Albany took his titles when the English seized the colony in 1664.

When the Dutch briefly retook Albany in 1673, what did they rename it?

Willemstadt honoured Stadtholder William III, later king of England; the English regained the town in 1674 under the Treaty of Westminster and restored the name Albany.

Which provincial governor granted Albany its city charter on July 22, 1686?

Thomas Dongan, the colonial governor, issued the Dongan Charter on July 22, 1686; Albany calls itself the longest continuously chartered city in the United States.

Who presented the Albany Plan of Union, the first formal proposal to unite the colonies, in 1754?

Benjamin Franklin drafted the Albany Plan of Union for the Albany Congress of June-July 1754; delegates from seven colonies approved it, but every colonial assembly rejected it.

Which Albany native signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776?

Philip Livingston, born in Albany in 1716, was a wealthy merchant who signed for his colony; he died in 1778 while Congress sat in York, Pennsylvania.

Which Albany-born general and senator was Alexander Hamilton's father-in-law?

Philip Schuyler, born in Albany in 1733, served in the French and Indian War and as a major general in the Revolution; his daughter Elizabeth married Alexander Hamilton in 1780.

Albany became New York's permanent state capital in which year?

In 1797 the legislature settled permanently in Albany; before that it had met in Kingston, Poughkeepsie and Manhattan as well as Albany.

Which city is the only US state capital older than Albany?

Santa Fe was founded by Spanish colonists in 1610, a few years before the first fort at Albany in 1614; Boston (1630) and Annapolis (1649) came later.

In 1807 Robert Fulton launched the first successful commercial steamboat service between Albany and where?

New York City was the other end of Fulton's 1807 run; his North River Steamboat covered the roughly 150 miles to Albany in about a day and a half.

The original Erie Canal ended at Albany; where does today's Barge Canal end instead?

Waterford, just north of Troy, is where the Barge Canal of 1918 leaves the Hudson; the original canal ran on to a man-made lagoon at Albany, the Albany Basin.

Albany's 1830s rail line became part of which company that Erastus Corning consolidated in 1853?

New York Central was formed in 1853 by merging the small lines between Albany and Buffalo, the oldest being Albany's 1831 railroad to Schenectady; Erastus Corning served as its first president until 1864.

Construction of the New York State Capitol, declared complete in 1899, took how many years?

32 years passed between the start of construction in 1867 and Governor Theodore Roosevelt's declaration of completion in 1899; the cost reached about $25 million.

Why were the State Capitol's planned dome and tower never completed?

The building's weight was causing stress fractures in the masonry as the structure settled, so the planned central dome was abandoned and the roof was finished without it.

Which governor drove the construction of the Empire State Plaza between 1965 and 1978?

Nelson Rockefeller, governor from 1959 to 1973, conceived the plaza and pushed it through; Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd, at first an opponent, arranged the county bond financing that paid for it.

The Corning Tower on the Empire State Plaza holds what distinction?

Tallest building in New York outside NYC, the Corning Tower rises 589 feet over 44 storeys, with a free observation deck on the 42nd floor.

Erastus Corning 2nd was mayor of Albany from 1942 until his death in which year?

1983 was the year Corning died in office, on May 28, after 41 years as mayor, one of the longest mayoral tenures in US history.

Who became the first woman elected mayor of Albany, in November 2013?

Kathy Sheehan, then city treasurer, won the November 2013 election and took office in January 2014 as Albany's first female mayor.

Which Albany native won the 1984 Pulitzer for Ironweed, part of his cycle of novels set there?

William Kennedy, born in Albany in 1928, won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Ironweed; the 1987 film starred Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep.

Which two famous authors lived in Albany with their families as children, before their careers?

Herman Melville and Henry James both spent part of their boyhoods in Albany: Melville's family moved there in 1830 and he attended Albany Academy, while James's grandfather William James was one of the city's richest merchants.

Albany's Tulip Festival, held each May, celebrates the legacy of which colonial settlers?

The Dutch founded Albany as a fur-trading post; the tulip became the city's official flower in 1948 under Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd, and the first Tulip Festival followed in 1949.

The Tulip Festival is held in which Albany green space?

Washington Park opened in the early 1870s on the site of Albany's former State Street Burying Ground; its lake, Lake House and tulip beds form the festival's centrepiece.

A four-ton statue of which advertising dog stands on a former RCA building roof in Albany?

Nipper, the RCA Victor terrier, was hoisted onto the roof of a Broadway warehouse in 1954; the 28-foot dog became one of Albany's best-known landmarks.

The Albany Pine Bush preserve protects a rare inland example of what kind of ecosystem?

Sand-dune barrens of pitch pine and scrub oak cover the Pine Bush, whose dunes were blown up from the sandy bed of glacial Lake Albany; the state created the preserve in 1988.

Which endangered butterfly is the emblem of the Albany Pine Bush?

Karner Blue caterpillars feed only on wild blue lupine; the butterfly was named in 1944 by Vladimir Nabokov after Karner, the hamlet in the Pine Bush where he studied it.

The University at Albany began in 1844 as what kind of institution?

A teacher-training normal school, the New York State Normal School, opened in Albany in 1844; it became a teachers college in 1914 and joined the State University of New York in 1948.

The University at Albany's sports teams are known by what nickname?

Great Danes replaced the old 'Pedagogues' nickname in 1965 after a student vote; the university's colours are purple and gold and its mascot is Damien the Great Dane.

Albany Law School, opened in 1851, claims what distinction?

Oldest in New York State is the school's own claim: Albany Law opened in 1851, has run without interruption since, and in 1873 became part of Union University alongside Union College and Albany Medical College.

Albany claims to have opened the first municipal airport in the United States in which year?

1908 is the date Albany cites for its first airfield; the present Albany International Airport, in the town of Colonie north of the city, opened as the municipal airport in 1928.

Amtrak's Albany station is actually across the river in which neighbouring city?

Rensselaer, directly across the Hudson, has hosted Albany's rail station since 1968, when trains left downtown's Union Station; the current Albany-Rensselaer station opened in 2002.

Albany's Beaux-Arts Union Station on Broadway opened in which year?

1900 was the year Union Station opened, designed by the Boston firm Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge; it served trains until 1968 and was reborn as a bank headquarters in 1986.

Which US senator from New York was born in Albany in 1966?

Kirsten Gillibrand was born in Albany on December 9, 1966; her grandmother Polly Noonan was a power in the city's Democratic machine, and Gillibrand entered the Senate in January 2009.

What was Albany's population at the 2020 census?

About 99,000 people (99,224) lived in Albany at the 2020 census, up slightly from 97,856 in 2010 and far below the 1950 peak of nearly 135,000.

Which arena football team played at the city's downtown arena from 1990 to 2000?

The Firebirds won ArenaBowl XIII in 1999, beating the Orlando Predators, before the franchise moved to Indianapolis after the 2000 season; the af2 Albany Conquest revived the Firebirds name in 2009.

Which political boss built the Democratic machine that ran Albany from 1922 into the 1980s?

Dan O'Connell, with his brothers and the Corning family, captured City Hall with William Hackett's election in 1921 and bossed the machine until his death in 1977.

Albany's Palace Theatre opened in 1931 as a movie palace for which chain?

RKO opened Albany's Palace Theatre on Clinton Avenue in 1931, a movie palace designed by the theatre architect John Eberson; it later became a performing-arts venue and home of the Albany Symphony Orchestra.

Which Albany-born scientist became the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1846?

Joseph Henry, born in Albany and educated at the Albany Academy, where he built powerful electromagnets, led the Smithsonian from its founding in 1846 until his death in 1878.

Albany's first documented European structure, Fort Nassau, was built in 1614 on which island?

Castle Island, later merged into the Port of Albany's Westerlo Island, held Fort Nassau from 1614; the fur-trading post was abandoned after repeated spring floods around 1618.

Which Dutch city, Albany's sister city since 1947, sent the bulbs that launched the Tulip Festival?

Nijmegen became Albany's sister city in 1947 after Albanians collected books to restock the war-wrecked library of its Catholic university; the first Tulip Festival followed in 1949.

USS Slater, moored on Albany's Hudson waterfront, is America's last floating example of what?

A WWII destroyer escort, the Cannon-class USS Slater (DE-766) was launched in 1944, served in the Greek navy until 1991, and came to Albany in 1997 as a museum ship.

Which Wicked author grew up in North Albany and graduated from SUNY Albany?

Gregory Maguire, born in Albany in 1954, grew up in North Albany and took his bachelor's degree at the University at Albany before writing Wicked, published in 1995.

Henry James identified which of his heroines as coming from Albany?

Isabel Archer, heroine of The Portrait of a Lady (1881), is introduced in her late grandmother's house in Albany before her aunt carries her off to Europe.

Which famous architect designed Albany City Hall, opened in 1883?

Henry Hobson Richardson designed Albany City Hall in his Romanesque style after the previous hall burned in 1880; it opened in 1883, and Richardson also shaped the neighbouring State Capitol's interiors.

What is Albany's oldest surviving building, dating from 1728?

Van Ostrande-Radliff House at 48 Hudson Avenue was built around 1728 by Johannes van Ostrande; later storefronts concealed the colonial brick house until its rediscovery, and the Quackenbush House followed around 1736.

Which NFL team held its training camp at the University at Albany from 1996 to 2012?

UAlbany's Great Danes were the first SUNY school to reach the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, in 2006.

'Tech Valley', the marketing name for the Albany region, was coined in which year?

1998 is when Wallace Altes of the Albany-Colonie Regional Chamber of Commerce coined 'Tech Valley'; the label covers 19 counties of eastern New York, from Westchester north to the Canadian border.

Which late-night host dropped out of Albany's College of Saint Rose in 1995 to chase a comedy career in Los Angeles?

Jimmy Fallon went back in 2009, when Saint Rose awarded him his degree, counting his television work as credit.

Which future heavyweight champion made his professional boxing debut in Albany in March 1985 at the age of eighteen?

Mike Tyson stopped Hector Mercedes in the first round that night; twenty months later he was the youngest heavyweight champion in history.

'Albany beef' was a joking nineteenth-century nickname for which fish, once hugely abundant in the Hudson River?

Sturgeon were so abundant in the Hudson that local bars gave away the eggs, better known as caviar, as a free snack with five-cent beer.

Albany inventor Seth Wheeler patented which household staple in perforated roll form in the nineteenth century?

Toilet paper on a perforated roll was Wheeler's idea, and the drawing in his 1891 patent is still cited to settle which way round the roll should hang.

Which future NBA coaching great won his first championship as a head coach with the Albany Patroons in 1984?

Phil Jackson guided the Patroons to the 1984 CBA crown, his first ring as a coach, before winning NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers.

In The Simpsons' much-memed Steamed Hams sketch, which character claims the phrase is an Albany expression?

Principal Skinner is trying to pass off fast-food burgers as his own cooking; the 1996 segment became a hugely popular internet meme in 2016.

Which singer opened Albany's downtown Knickerbocker Arena with a concert on its first night in January 1990?

Frank Sinatra, then 74, sang on opening night; the building later took sponsors' names, becoming the Pepsi Arena in 1997.

What is the name of the rounded concrete performing arts venue on Albany's Empire State Plaza, completed in 1978?

The Egg, named for its shape, was the last piece of the plaza to be finished, twelve years after work on it began.

A recreation of which children's TV show's brownstone stoop stands in Albany's New York State Museum?

Sesame Street's stoop sits in the museum's Metropolis Hall, alongside a complete vintage subway car and a recreated Little Italy barbershop.

Which US president, once Collector of the Port of New York, is buried in Albany Rural Cemetery at Menands?

Chester A. Arthur lies beside his wife Ellen, who died suddenly in 1880, the year before he became president.

Which 60 Minutes commentator, famous for the wry essays that closed the programme, was born in Albany in 1919?

Andy Rooney ended 60 Minutes with his few-minute essays from 1978 until 2011, making his last regular appearance a month before he died at 92.

Which future San Francisco city supervisor studied from 1947 to 1951 at what became the University at Albany?

Harvey Milk majored in mathematics in Albany and joined the Navy during the Korean War, long before his landmark 1977 election.

Which TV cook traces her 30 Minute Meals idea to her time as a buyer at an Albany gourmet market?

Rachael Ray noticed that shoppers at Cowan & Lobel were reluctant to cook, so she built classes around meals ready in half an hour.

Which Prohibition-era gangster was gunned down in a Dove Street rooming house in Albany in December 1931?

Legs Diamond had survived so many attempts on his life that he was called the clay pigeon of the underworld; he was killed hours after a jury acquitted him.

Which actor was starring on an Albany stage on the day the Civil War began in April 1861?

John Wilkes Booth praised the South's secession so loudly in Albany that angry locals demanded he be banned from the stage.

Which Ice Age animal's skeleton, unearthed at nearby Cohoes in 1866, became a star exhibit of Albany's State Museum?

A mastodon turned up when workers dug the foundations of a Harmony Mills textile mill, and its bones took several weeks to unearth.

Which religious sect founded its first American community in 1776 on land later used for Albany's airport?

The Shakers' founder, Mother Ann Lee, is buried at the site, and the airport was built over the community's herb garden.

Which British general's 1777 advance on Albany from Canada ended with his surrender near Saratoga?

John Burgoyne counted on meeting a second British army at Albany; it never arrived, and he surrendered his whole force that October.

Which mountain range, the setting of Rip Van Winkle, rises about 40 miles southwest of Albany?

The Catskills were painted again and again by the Hudson River School, and later became a favourite holiday escape for city families.

Which nickname is given to Interstate 87 on its toll-free run from Albany to the Canadian border?

The Northway was finished in 1967, just in time to carry Americans to that year's world's fair in Montreal.

Which future US president led the Albany Regency, the political machine that dominated New York in the 1820s?

Martin Van Buren ran the Regency through patronage and loyal newspapers, a knack for organisation that earned him the nickname the Little Magician.

Which future US president studied at Albany Law School in the 1860s after fighting in the Civil War?

William McKinley stayed in Albany for less than a year, then went home to Ohio, where he was admitted to the bar in March 1867.

Which early locomotive hauled New York's first steam passenger train from Albany to Schenectady in 1831?

DeWitt Clinton, named for the governor behind the Erie Canal, pulled cars made from stagecoach bodies, with some riders perched on outside seats.

Which aviation pioneer flew from Albany down the Hudson to Manhattan in 1910 to win a $10,000 newspaper prize?

Glenn Curtiss covered the 137 miles in under four hours with one refuelling stop, the first long-distance flight between two major American cities.

Which band's live album Dozin' at the Knick was recorded at Albany's Knickerbocker Arena in March 1990?

Grateful Dead played three nights at the arena that month, and all three concerts have since been officially released on CD.

Which actor starred opposite Meryl Streep in the 1987 film Ironweed, shot largely on location in Albany?

Jack Nicholson played a washed-up former baseball player drifting through Depression-era Albany, and both leads earned Oscar nominations.

Which future Nobel laureate in literature took up an Albert Schweitzer chair at the University at Albany in 1984?

Toni Morrison wrote her first play, Dreaming Emmett, on a commission from Albany's Writers Institute, and published Beloved while teaching there.

Which body, founded in 1847 and based in Albany, has the final say on questions of New York State law?

The Court of Appeals outranks the Supreme Court, which in New York is, confusingly, the name for the trial courts.

Which name is given to the lower house of New York's legislature, which meets in the State Capitol in Albany?

The Assembly has 150 seats, and its members serve two-year terms with no term limits.

The 1911 blaze that gutted the State Library in Albany's Capitol came four days after which New York disaster?

The Triangle Shirtwaist fire was barely out of the headlines when the Capitol blaze destroyed some 450,000 books and 270,000 manuscripts.

Remarks at an Albany dinner, reported in the Albany Register in 1804, drew Alexander Hamilton into a duel with whom?

Aaron Burr demanded an explanation once the letter appeared, and the quarrel ended with pistols at Weehawken, across the Hudson from Manhattan, that July.

Albany's Henry Johnson earned a posthumous Medal of Honor fighting in the First World War with which famed regiment?

Harlem Hellfighters was the nickname of the 369th Infantry; Johnson, once a porter at Albany's Union Station, received the medal only in 2015, decades after his death.

Albany, Schenectady and which other city on the Hudson are the three main cities of New York's Capital District?

Troy, a few miles upriver, grew rich on its ironworks and on the shirt and collar factories that earned it the nickname the Collar City.

Which early plastic did John Wesley Hyatt first manufacture in Albany as a substitute for ivory in billiard balls?

Celluloid answered a $10,000 prize offered because ivory was costly and running short; Hyatt's Albany firms also made false teeth and piano keys.

In Albany and the rest of New York's Capital District, mozzarella sticks traditionally come with which dipping sauce?

Raspberry sauce is the Capital District's twist on a snack that almost everywhere else is dipped in tomato or marinara sauce.

Which escarpment roughly west of Albany lies largely inside John Boyd Thacher State Park?

Helderberg cliffs give the park its sweeping views across the Hudson Valley and the whole Capital District.

Which media company has owned Albany's daily Times Union newspaper since its founder bought the title in 1924?

Hearst took over when William Randolph Hearst himself bought the daily, which had begun life in 1856 as the Morning Times.

The Albany River Rats spent most of their seasons as the top minor-league affiliate of which NHL team?

New Jersey Devils prospects won Albany the Calder Cup in 1995; when the Devils left in 2006, the Carolina Hurricanes took over the affiliation.

Albany City Hall's tower was fitted in 1927 with the first municipal example in the United States of which instrument?

A carillon of bells cast in England was added after a public fund drive that drew donations from more than 25,000 people.

Which future Dutch queen's visit to Albany as a princess is said to have inspired the Empire State Plaza?

Beatrix was driven through a run-down district nicknamed the Gut, and the governor's embarrassment is said to have set the huge project in motion.

Which Albany landmark near the Capitol, opened in 1912, is fronted by a block-long row of 36 marble columns?

The State Education Building's colonnade stretches 590 feet and was believed to be the largest in the world when it was built.

Which New York governor, elected in 1882, dismissed the architects of Albany's State Capitol over its rising costs?

Grover Cleveland brought in Isaac Perry to finish the building, and within two years had been elected president.

Which architect of the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center also designed Albany's Empire State Plaza?

Wallace Harrison worked up the first plan aboard the governor's private plane, starting from doodles on the back of a postcard.

Which architect, the lead designer of Radio City Music Hall, planned the University at Albany's uptown campus?

Edward Durell Stone designed the campus in 1962; his other works include the Kennedy Center in Washington and the United States Embassy in New Delhi.

Albany's Pinkster festival, long a great celebration for the city's Black community, is named for which Christian feast?

Pentecost is Pinksteren in Dutch; as an African-American celebration the holiday reached its height in New York between 1790 and 1810.

Which Albany-born author of The Book of the Damned made a career of cataloguing unexplained phenomena?

Charles Fort attracted admirers who call themselves Forteans, and his collections of anomalies fed the imaginations of science-fiction writers.

Which Albany-born federal judge became hugely influential without ever serving on the Supreme Court?

Learned Hand had, by a 2004 count, been quoted by legal scholars and by the Supreme Court more often than any other lower-court judge.

An equestrian statue of which Union cavalry general stands before Albany's Capitol, near an avenue named for him?

Philip Sheridan gave Albany as his birthplace; he was the third of six children of Irish immigrants from County Cavan.

Which television news anchor grew up in the Albany suburb of Delmar and later graduated from Albany Law School?

Megyn Kelly was an editor of the Albany Law Review and spent nine years at a corporate law firm before turning to broadcasting.

Which storyteller of the California Gold Rush, author of The Luck of Roaring Camp, was born in Albany in 1836?

Bret Harte moved west in 1853 and worked as a miner, teacher and messenger before that one story made him famous across America and Europe.