page_title: Albany City Hall
section_title: Current city hall
hierarchical_section_title: Albany City Hall / Current city hall
caption_attribution_description: English: Albany City Hall interior, decorated for the Christmas holidays.
context_page_description: Albany City Hall is the seat of government of 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 and Pine Street. It is a rectangular, three-and-a-half-story building with a 202-foot tall tower at its southwest corner. The tower contains one of the few municipal carillons in the country. Albany's carillon was dedicated in 1927 through the donations of 25,000 people. It has 49 bells ranging from small to gargantuan. The carillon's largest bell has a 5'9" diameter and weighs 10,953 pounds and the smallest bell weighs in at only 27 pounds.
  Albany's first city hall was the Stadt Huys, built by the Dutch at the intersection of Broadway and Hudson Avenue probably in the 1660s, though possibly earlier. It was probably replaced around 1740 with a larger building, which continued to be known by the same name.
context_section_description: Following the 1880 fire, Henry Hobson Richardson, who was then active as one of a team of architects working on the nearby New York State capitol, secured the commission for the replacement city hall after a limited competition between six architects and architectural firms.  The budget for the new city hall was limited to $185,000; Richardson's design came in at $184,000. However the appointed public committee upped the price to $204,000 after granite was substituted for brownstone in the design. The new city hall design dates from the period that is typically regarded as Richardson's architectural peak. His design was similar to others executed in his personal version of the Romanesque style. Architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock described city hall as "one of Richardson's most Romanesque designs" and the building's NRHP nomination added: "Albany City Hall's banded arches, rhythmic fenestration, bold expression of materials and corner placement of the tower are characteristic features of Richardson's work often to be repeated by his followers."
  The building is a load-bearing masonry design laid out in a rectangle, with a 202-foot (62 m) tall, Venetian-style tower on its southwest corner topped with a pyramidal roof. The main structure is three-and-a-half stories tall and the front (west) face is nine bays wide. The exterior walls are rusticated Milford (Rhode Island) granite with Longmeadow (Massachusetts) brownstone trim. Save for the bold asymmetrical placement of the tower (which is a prime example of Richardson's disregard for architectural correctness and known for being one of his best tower designs), the building is noted for its general simplicity in design. The entranceway is a simple triple-arch loggia; other design elements on the front façade are limited to its windows and a quadruple-arch balcony off the Common Council chamber. The building is simultaneously noted for its general simplicity and care for small details, especially its intricate carvings. The entranceway is flanked by multiple tiers of relief sculpture and gargoyles. Most of the stone cutters originally brought to Albany to work on the capitol were later hired to do the sculptural details on city hall.
  Many elements of the exterior design are representations of interior functionality. Because the Common Council chamber is located on the second floor (above the entrance), that story is the same height as the first-floor entrance hall. The tower is essentially window-less because it was meant to be the city archive; a round staircase extends up the southeast corner of the tower for access. The short tower on the building's southeast corner was originally meant to be the transition between city hall and the (to-be built) jail, complete with a "bridge of sighs" to transport inmates straight from their cells in the jail to the court rooms in city hall.
  Due to lack of funds at the time (the building's initial budget doubled, ending up at $325,000 ($8.61 million in modern dollars) including furnishings), Richardson devoted most of his efforts to the building's exterior. A report from the Times Union states, "There wasn't enough money for Richardson to do the job as thoroughly as he would have liked. He said in his writing that if there wasn't sufficient money, he'd rather do it right on the outside and leave it to a future generation to finish the interior. The interior was finished by city architects a good 30 years after Richardson built it." The "city architects" were Ogden and Gander who designed the alterations in 1916 that were subsequently completed in 1918. The mayor's office is on the first floor of the tower, the Council chamber and offices are on the building's second floor, and the city clerk's office is on the second floor of the tower. The mayor's office contains a painting of the city's first mayor, Pieter Schuyler.
  Under the leadership of William Gorham Rice in 1927, a carillon was added to the tower; it contained sixty bells (though it could produce only 47 different notes since top notes have double bells) made by John Ta
caption: View of interior atrium decorated for the December holidays.
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