97 Fun Facts About Albany

Albany sits on the Hudson just south of its confluence with which other river?

The Mohawk joins the Hudson at Cohoes, a few miles above Albany. Its valley is a natural passage through the Appalachians, which is why the Erie Canal set out west from here.

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

The Mohicans called the place 'the fireplace of the Mohican nation'. They are far from the last of anything: their descendants are today's Stockbridge-Munsee Community in Wisconsin.

Albany printer John Wesley Hyatt invented celluloid while seeking an ivory substitute for which game's balls?

Billiards. A New York supplier had offered $10,000 for a replacement for ivory, and Hyatt's experiments in Albany produced the first practical plastic, soon moulded into false teeth and piano keys as well.

Which Dutch fort, built on the Hudson in 1624, was the trading post that grew into Albany?

Fort Orange was put up in 1624 by settlers who were mostly not Dutch at all: they were Walloons, French-speaking Protestants from what is now Belgium.

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

Beverwijck became a village in its own right in 1652, when Peter Stuyvesant took the settlers around the fort out of the local patroon's control and put them under the Dutch West India Company.

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 lasted barely a year. New York City had become New Orange in the same Dutch reconquest, and the 1674 Treaty of Westminster handed both towns back to England.

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

Thomas Dongan signed it three months after New York City's charter. It gave Albany the exclusive right to negotiate with the Native nations and made it the upper Hudson's only market town.

Who drafted the Albany Plan of Union, the 1754 proposal to place the colonies under one government?

Benjamin Franklin drew his 'Join, or Die' snake cartoon to sell the idea. Delegates from seven colonies adopted the plan in Albany, and then every colonial legislature turned it down.

Which Albany native signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776?

Philip Livingston, born in Albany in 1716, made his career as a New York City merchant. Though dying of dropsy, he went back to Congress in May 1778 and died in York, Pennsylvania weeks later.

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

Philip Schuyler hosted the wedding himself: Elizabeth married Hamilton in the parlour of the family's Albany mansion in 1780, and the house is now a state historic site.

Which Hudson Valley city was New York's first state capital, before Albany?

Kingston became the first capital in 1777, and British troops burned it that October. The legislature then moved from town to town until it settled in Albany for good in 1797.

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

Santa Fe was founded by the Spanish in 1610, four years before the first trading fort at Albany. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 then kept the Spanish out of it for twelve years.

Whose steamboat began the first commercially successful service between New York City and Albany in 1807?

Robert Fulton's boat needed 32 hours of steaming for the 150 miles, under five miles an hour, and stopped for 20 more at the riverside estate of his wealthy backer.

The original Erie Canal ended at Albany, but where does today's Barge Canal leave the Hudson instead?

Waterford is where the Barge Canal, finished in 1918, leaves the Hudson. Unlike the old hand-dug channel it uses the rivers themselves, and a flight of five locks there lifts boats to the next one.

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

New York Central was Corning's 1853 merger of ten small lines between Albany and Buffalo. It was run from Albany until Cornelius Vanderbilt took over in 1867 and moved the head office to Manhattan.

Construction of the New York State Capitol began in 1867 and took how many years to finish?

32 years. Three successive teams of architects worked on the Capitol before it was finished in 1899, and the changes of hand left it a blend of Renaissance and Romanesque styles.

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

Nelson Rockefeller expected voters statewide to reject a bond issue for an Albany project, so Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd helped him pay for the plaza with Albany County bonds instead.

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 Democratic primary that September, which all but decided it: Democrats have held Albany's mayoralty without a break since the 1920s.

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

William Kennedy saw Ironweed turned down by publishers thirteen times before Saul Bellow pressed Viking to think again. The novel then won the Pulitzer and became a film.

Which future novelist moved to Albany as a boy in 1830 and briefly attended the Albany Academy?

Herman Melville's family retreated to Albany when his father's import business collapsed in Manhattan. The father died two years later, and Herman, aged 12, was sent out to work as a clerk.

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 hosts it every Mother's Day weekend. Since the first festival in 1949 it has opened with volunteers in Dutch costume scrubbing State Street and the crowning of a Tulip Queen.

A giant statue of which advertising dog stands on the roof of a former RCA building in Albany?

Nipper was a real dog from Bristol, painted listening to a phonograph three years after he died. The picture, His Master's Voice, was then registered as a trademark and became Victor's, later RCA's.

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

Sand-dune barrens of pitch pine and scrub oak grew on the sand left behind when Glacial Lake Albany drained thousands of years ago. The surviving stretch has been a preserve since 1988.

Which endangered butterfly, first described by Vladimir Nabokov, takes its name from a hamlet in the Albany Pine Bush?

Karner Blue caterpillars eat only wild lupine, so the butterfly vanishes wherever the plant does. Nabokov, a serious butterfly scientist as well as a novelist, described it in 1944.

The University at Albany began in 1844 as a 'normal school', a college that trained people for which profession?

Teaching. The school kept 'Teachers' in its name until 1959, and the university's Latin motto still means 'wisdom, both for its own sake and for the sake of teaching'.

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

Great Danes was a student's idea. She won a $25 savings bond in 1965 for suggesting the dog, which she praised for its size, strength, courage, speed and stamina.

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

Rensselaer took over when Albany's downtown Union Station closed in 1968, so the capital's trains have stopped across the river ever since. In 2020 it ranked as Amtrak's ninth-busiest station.

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 reached the Senate by appointment. When Hillary Clinton left to become Secretary of State in 2009, Governor David Paterson chose the Albany-born congresswoman for her seat.

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 in downtown Albany from 1990 to 2000?

The Firebirds won ArenaBowl XIII in 1999, beating Orlando 59-48, and were gone a year later, when the franchise moved to Indianapolis. A new Albany team took up the name in 2023.

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

Dan O'Connell's Democrats toppled a long-entrenched Republican machine when William Hackett won the mayoralty. O'Connell then held the real power in the city, under one mayor after another, until he died in 1977.

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

RKO spared no expense on its 1931 movie palace, but by 1969 it was losing money and closed. The City of Albany then bought the building for $90,000 and reopened it.

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

Joseph Henry discovered self-induction while experimenting with electromagnets as a teacher at the Albany Academy, which is why the unit of inductance is called the henry.

Fort Nassau, the Dutch trading post built at Albany in 1614, stood on which island in the Hudson?

Castle Island, now part of the Port of Albany, kept its fort for only a few years: the river flooded it so often that the traders abandoned the post by about 1618.

Which Dutch city became Albany's sister city after World War II, when Albany helped rebuild its university library?

Nijmegen's Catholic university had lost much of its library in the war, and Albany sent books to restock it. Tulip bulbs came back from the Netherlands in thanks, and the Tulip Festival grew from them.

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

A WWII destroyer escort, Slater spent forty years in the Greek navy under the name Aetos before she was brought home as a museum. Fewer than a dozen of her kind survive anywhere.

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

Gregory Maguire lost his mother to complications from his own birth and spent part of his infancy in an Albany orphanage before his family took him back. Wicked followed in 1995.

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

Isabel Archer is a young woman from Albany whose aunt carries her off to Europe. James knew the city: his grandfather settled there and became one of the richest men in New York State.

Which architect designed Albany City Hall, opened in 1883?

Henry Hobson Richardson got the commission after fire destroyed the old city hall in 1880. His tower later gained a 49-bell carillon, one of the few owned by an American city.

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 began holding its summer training camp at the University at Albany in 1996?

The New York Giants spent 16 summers at UAlbany, their longest stay at any camp. The 2011 lockout kept them home in New Jersey for a year, and in 2013 they moved camp to their own headquarters there.

'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.