page_title: Albany City Hall
section_title: Stadt Huys
hierarchical_section_title: Albany City Hall / Former city halls / Stadt Huys
caption_attribution_description: English: Albany City Hall, built circa 1743.
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: Albany's original city hall, the Stadt Huys (/ˈstæt ˈhaɪs/; Dutch for "city hall"; sometimes written Stadt Huis) may have been built as early as 1635. Evidence from the journals of Wouter van Twiller, Director of New Netherland (1633–1638), suggests that at least some type of punitory building was built on the site during his term in office. George Howell and Jonathan Tenney, in their book Bi-centennial History of Albany, claim that reports from 1646 state the building was a substantial (at least for its time) three-story structure, with the lower floor built of stone and used as a jail. However Albany historian Cuyler Reynolds claims the Stadt Huys was not built until 1673. All sources agree that it stood at the northeast corner of today's Hudson Avenue and Broadway, the current site of the SUNY System Administration Building. The Stadt Huys officially became city hall when the Dongan Charter incorporated Albany into a city in 1686. An engraving of a 1695 map of Albany clearly identifies the Stadt Huys at the northeast corner of present-day Hudson Ave and Broadway.
  It is probable that a new city hall was built on the site of the Stadt Huys around 1740; historians at the New York State Museum (NYSM) claim it to have been completed in 1741. Growing tired of increasingly cramped space, the city government was able to secure funds from the provincial government to construct a new city hall on the same site. This building was also commonly known as the Stadt Huys, even though it was a completely new structure and the English had been in control of New York for more than 75 years. The NYSM describes the new Stadt Huys as a three-story brick structure, adding that it was a "more substantial building" than its predecessor. This new building was the third-largest building in Albany, surpassed only by the local Dutch church (though not the one that stands today) and Fort Albany. The roof of the new structure was gabled and was topped with a cupola and belfry. Howell and Tenney claim that the original Stadt Huys was in use for at least 160 years (meaning a replacement structure would not have been needed until 1795 at the earliest), which is in disagreement with the idea that a new Stadt Huys was built in the 1740s.
  In 1754, the Stadt Huys was the site of the Albany Congress; Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania presented the Albany Plan of Union there. This was the first formal proposal to unite the British American colonies. The Plan of Union's original intention was to unite the colonies in defense against aggressions of the French to the north; it was not an attempt to become independent from the auspices of the British crown. Although it was never adopted by the British Parliament, it was an important precursor to the United States Constitution. A month prior to the meeting, Franklin published his Join, or Die political cartoon, an infamous graphical representation of the Plan of Union.
  During the Revolutionary War, city hall was home to the Albany Committee of Correspondence (the political arm of the local revolutionary movement), which took over operation of Albany's government in 1775 and eventually expanded its power to control all of Albany County (which at that time was the largest county in the colony, extending far past its current borders). Tories and prisoners of war were often jailed in city hall alongside common criminals. Following the war, city hall was an occasional meeting place of the newly formed New York Legislature, in addition to being home to the city and county governments, the jail, courts, and local registry.
  In 1797 Albany was declared the official capital of the state and the Legislature made city hall its home until the first state capitol was opened in 1809. In an effort to move public buildings away from the bustling and expanding waterfront, the new capitol was located atop the State Street hill, directly in front of the site where the current building now stands. City surveyor Simeon De Witt, in his 1794 plan of the city, indicates this land as being set aside as a public square; it had been dedic
caption: The 1740s city hall
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