Albany ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York. It is also the county seat of, and the most populous city in Albany County. Albany is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, approximately south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. Its population was 99,224 at the time of the 2020 census and was estimated at 102,305 in 2026.
The oldest city in New York, the City of Albany is the economic and cultural core of New York State's Capital District. The Capital District is a metropolitan area including the nearby cities and suburbs of Colonie, Schenectady, Saratoga Springs and Troy. With an estimated 1.3 million residents, the Capital District is one of the most populous metropolitan areas and is the fastest-growing region in Upstate New York.
The area that ultimately became Albany was originally inhabited by Algonquian-speaking Mohicans. The area was settled by Dutch colonists, who built Fort Nassau in 1614 for fur trading and Fort Orange in 1624. In 1664, the English took over the Dutch settlements, renaming the city "Albany" in honor of the Scottish title of the Duke of York (later James II of England and Ireland and James VII of Scotland): the Duke of Albany. The city was officially chartered in 1686 under English rule. It became the capital of New York in 1797 after the formation of the United States. Albany is the oldest surviving settlement of the original British Thirteen Colonies north of Virginia.
In the late 18th century and throughout most of the 19th, Albany was a center of trade and transportation. The city lies toward the north end of the navigable Hudson River. It was the original eastern terminus of the Erie Canal and was home to some of the earliest railroads in the world. In the 1920s, a powerful political machine controlled by the Democratic Party emerged in Albany. Albany's population shrank because of urban sprawl and suburbanization in the latter part of the 20th century. In the 1990s, the New York State Legislature approved for the city a US$234 million building and renovation plan, which spurred downtown redevelopment.McEneny (2006), p. 201 Since 2020, the economy of Albany and the surrounding Capital District has been directed toward artificial intelligence, AI-based photonics, quantum computing hardware manufacturing, nanotechnology, and digital electronics.
History
Mohican, Mohawk, and Dutch before 1660
The Hudson River area was originally inhabited by Algonquian-speaking Mohicans, who called it Pempotowwuthut-Muhhcanneuw, meaning "the fireplace of the Mohican nation".McEneny (2006), p. 6 Based to the west along the Mohawk River, the Iroquoian-speaking Mohawk called it skahnéhtati, also transliterated to Sche-negh-ta-da, "through the pine woods", referring to the path they took there.
According to Hendrick Aupaumut, the Mohicans came to the area from the north and the west. They settled along the Mahicannituck River, which is now called the Hudson River, and called themselves the Muh-he-con-neok, the "People of the Waters That Are Never Still".
The Mohawks, one of the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, were based in the Mohawk valley and noted for their fur trading and their access to trade between the Haudenosaunee and other nations. The Mohawk became strong trading partners with the Dutch and English. It is likely that the area was visited by European fur traders perhaps as early as 1540, but the extent and duration of those visits are unclear.
Permanent European claims began when Englishman Henry Hudson, exploring for the Dutch East India Company on the Half Moon (), reached the area in 1609, claiming it for the United Netherlands."Henry Hudson". (2010). Britannica. Retrieved June 27, 2010. In 1614, Hendrick Christiaensen built Fort Nassau on Castle Island (now called Port of Albany), in the Hudson River. The fort acted as a fur-trading post and was the first documented European structure in present-day Albany. Commencement of the fur trade provoked hostility from the French colony in Canada and among the natives, all of whom vied to control the trade. In 1618, a flood ruined Fort Nassau, but the Dutch replaced it with Fort Orange on the mainland in 1624. Both forts were named in honor of the leading family of the Dutch Revolt, members of the House of Orange-Nassau.Venema (2003), p. 13 Fort Orange and the surrounding area were incorporated as the village of Beverwijck () in 1652,Rittner (2002), p. 7Venema (2003), p. 12 and the city of Albany in 1686. In these early decades of trade, the Dutch, Mohican, and Mohawk developed relations that reflected differences among their three cultures.James Wesley Bradley, Before Albany: An Archaeology of Native-Dutch Relations in the Capital Region 1660–1664 , Albany: University of the State of New York, 2007, pp. 2–6
British rule to 1800 Albany is one of the oldest surviving European settlements from the original Thirteen Colonies and the longest continuously chartered city in the United States. When New Netherland was captured by the English in 1664, the name was changed from Beverwijck to Albany in honor of Prince James, Duke of Albany (later King James VII/II). Duke of Albany was a Scottish title given since 1398, generally to a younger son of the King of Scots. The name is ultimately derived from Alba, the Gaelic name for Scotland. The Dutch briefly regained Albany in August 1673 and renamed the city Willemstadt; the English took permanent possession in 1674 with the Treaty of Westminster. On November 1, 1683, the Province of New York was split into counties, with Albany County being the largest: it included all of present New York State north of Dutchess and Ulster Counties in addition to present-day Bennington County, Vermont, theoretically stretching west to the Pacific Ocean;Thorne, Kathryn Ford, Compiler & Long, John H., Editor: New York Atlas of Historical County Boundaries; The Newbury Library; 1993. Albany became the county seat. Albany was formally chartered as a municipality by provincial Governor Thomas Dongan on July 22, 1686. The Dongan Charter was virtually identical in content to the charter awarded to the city of New York three months earlier. Dongan created Albany as a strip of land wide and long. Over the years Albany would lose much of the land to the west and annex land to the north and south. At this point, Albany had a population of about 500 people.
Plan of Union In 1754, representatives of seven British North American colonies met in the Stadt Huys, Albany's city hall, for the Albany Congress; Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania presented the Albany Plan of Union there, which was the first formal proposal to unite the colonies.Rittner (2002), p. 22 Although it was never adopted by Parliament, it was an important precursor to the United States Constitution.McEneny (2006), p. 12 The same year, the French and Indian War, the fourth in a series of wars dating back to 1689, began. It ended in 1763 with French defeat, resolving a situation that had been a constant threat to Albany and held back its growth.McEneny (2006), p. 56
Revolutionary War and real estate In 1775, with the colonies in the midst of the Revolutionary War, the Stadt Huys became home to the Albany Committee of Correspondence (the political arm of the local revolutionary movement), which took over operation of Albany's government and eventually expanded its power to control all of Albany County. Tories and prisoners of war were often jailed in the Stadt Huys alongside common criminals. In 1776, Albany native Philip Livingston signed the Declaration of Independence.
During and after the Revolutionary War, Albany County saw a great increase in real estate transactions. After the 1777 colonial victory at the Battle of Saratoga, the upper Hudson Valley was generally at peace as the war raged on elsewhere. Prosperity was soon seen all over Upstate New York. Migrants from Vermont and Connecticut began flowing in, noting the advantages of living on the Hudson and trading at Albany, while being only a few days' sail from New York City. Albany reported a population of 3,498 in the first national census in 1790, an increase of almost 700% since its chartering.
Early decades of American independence On November 17, 1793, fire broke out at a stable belonging to Leonard Gansevoort, destroying 26 homes on Broadway, Maiden Lane, James Street, and State Street. Three were arrested and charged with arson: Pompey, a man belonging to Matthew Visscher; Dinah, a 14-year-old girl belonging to Volkert P. Douw; and Bet, a 12-year-old girl belonging to Philip S. Van Rensselaer. On January 6, 1794, the three were sentenced to death. Governor George Clinton issued a temporary stay of execution, but Dinah and Bet were executed by hanging on March 14, and Pompey on April 11, 1794.
In 1797, the state capital was moved permanently to Albany. From statehood to this date, the Legislature had frequently moved the state capital between Albany, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, and the city of New York. Albany is the tenth-oldest state capital in the United States and the second-oldest city that is a state capital, after Santa Fe, New Mexico.Rittner (2002), back cover
1800 to 1942
Albany has been a center of transportation for much of its history. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Albany saw development of the turnpike and by 1815, Albany was the turnpike center of the state. The development of Simeon De Witt's gridded block system in 1794—which renamed streets that had originally named after the British royal family with names of birds and mammals instead—was intersected by these major arterials coming out of Albany, cutting through the city at unexpected angles.McEneny (2006), p. 75Waite (1993), p. 201 The construction of the turnpike, in conjunction with canal and railroad systems, made Albany the hub of transportation for pioneers going to Buffalo and the Michigan Territory in the early and mid-19th century.Albany. (2010). Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 27, 2010, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
In 1807, Robert Fulton initiated a steamboat line from New York City to Albany, the first successful enterprise of its kind anywhere in the world. By 1810, with 10,763 people, Albany was the tenth-largest urban place in the nation. The town and village north of Albany known as "the Colonie" was annexed in 1815. In 1825 the Erie Canal was completed, forming a continuous water route from the Great Lakes to New York City. Unlike the current Barge Canal, which ends at nearby Waterford, the original Erie Canal ended at Albany; Lock 1 was north of Colonie Street. The Canal emptied into a man-made lagoon called the Albany Basin, which was Albany's main port from 1825 until the Port of Albany-Rensselaer opened in 1932. In 1829, while working as a professor at the Albany Academy, Joseph Henry, widely regarded as "the foremost American scientist of the 19th century", built the first electric motor. Three years later, he discovered electromagnetic self-induction (the SI unit for which is now the henry). He went on to be the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution."Joseph Henry". (2010). Britannica. Retrieved September 18, 2010. In the 1830 and 1840 censuses, Albany was ranked as the ninth-largest urban place in the nation; it dropped back to tenth in 1850. This was the last time the city was one of the top ten largest urban places in the nation.