page_title: New York Court of Appeals Building
section_title: Building
hierarchical_section_title: New York Court of Appeals Building / Building
caption_attribution_description: English: View of the New York Court of Appeals building in Albany, NY, USA, from Academy Park far enough back from Eagle Street that its dome is visible.
context_page_description: The New York Court of Appeals Building, officially referred to as Court of Appeals Hall, is located at the corner of Eagle and Pine streets in central Albany, New York, United States. It is a stone Greek Revival building built in 1842 and designed by Henry Rector. In 1971 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, one of six buildings housing a state's highest court currently so recognized. Seven years later it was included as a contributing property when the Lafayette Park Historic District was listed on the Register.
  At the time it was built it was known simply as the State Hall, housing not the court but its clerks. In addition to them, it was the offices of several other officials of the state's executive branch. Four years after its completion, a new state constitution was adopted, uniting two separate court hierarchies into one with the Court of Appeals as the highest court in the state.
  Rector's design incorporates all three classical orders in the building's rotunda, and uses stone arches to support the ceilings in an early attempt at fireproofing. It is one of only two extant buildings known to have been designed by him.
context_section_description: The courthouse occupies half of the block between Columbia, Eagle, Lodge and Pine streets. The building itself takes up the southwestern quadrant; its parking lot the southeast. The land slopes gently to the east, reflecting the proximity of the Hudson River one-half mile (800 m) in that direction.
  In the surrounding neighborhood are many similarly large buildings, most of them governmental or institutional and contributing properties to their historic districts. North, on the other half of the block, is the Albany County courthouse, an early 20th-century neoclassical building architecturally sympathetic to the Court of Appeals building. South, across Pine, is Albany's City Hall, a stone Romanesque Revival building by Henry Hobson Richardson from the 1880s, also listed on the Register individually. Just to its south, visible from the Court of Appeals building through Corning Park behind City Hall, is St. Peter's Episcopal Church, a French Gothic-style edifice by Richard Upjohn and his son that is a National Historic Landmark (NHL) as well as a contributing property to the Downtown Albany Historic District, which borders the Lafayette Park Historic District to the east at this point.
  Across Eagle Street is the two-acre (0.81 ha) open space of Academy Park. Across it, slightly to the northwest, straddling the boundary between it and the larger Lafayette Park beyond, is the Old Albany Academy Building, an 1815 stone Federal-style work by Philip Hooker that now serves as administrative offices of the City School District of Albany. Its modest scale is in contrast to the monumental New York State Education Department Building, visible across Lafayette Park. Above it Alfred E. Smith Building's 34 stories tower over the New York State Capitol, also an NHL, across Washington Avenue (New York State Route 5) to the west. The taller towers of the modernist Empire State Plaza are to the southeast. East of the Court of Appeals building, across Lodge Street, is St. Mary's Church, home to the city's oldest Roman Catholic congregation and another listed property that contributes to the Downtown Albany Historic District.
caption: The building with a fountain of Academy Park in the foreground.
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