page_title: Lafayette Park Historic District
section_title: 1900–present: New Capitol, government buildings and parks
hierarchical_section_title: Lafayette Park Historic District / History / 1900–present: New Capitol, government buildings and parks
caption_attribution_description: English: New York State Department of Education Building located in Albany, New York, United States
context_page_description: The Lafayette Park Historic District is located in central Albany, New York, United States. It includes the park and the combination of large government buildings and small rowhouses on the neighboring streets. In 1978 it was recognized as a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Many of its contributing properties are themselves listed on the National Register. One of them, the New York State Capitol, is a National Historic Landmark as well. Other government buildings include City hall, the building housing Albany County government, the state's highest court and the offices of its Education Department along with the the offices of the City School District of Albany. The Episcopal Diocese of Albany's cathedral is at one corner of the district.
  While the state capitol building has always been located on its present site, for most of the 19th century the neighborhood was best known for the townhouses on Elk Street, then one of the most desirable addresses in the city. Many politicians, including some of the state's governors and presidents Martin Van Buren and Franklin D. Roosevelt, lived there at different times.
context_section_description: The early 20th century significantly transformed the district. First, two more large government buildings were added. In 1906 Andrew Sloan Draper, first commissioner of the state's State Education Department (SED), wanted to move his agency into space of its own near the capitol along with the state library and museum. He considered the block on which Cathedral of All Saints stood to be the ideal location; however, the cathedral still owned some of the land and his approaches to the Doane, who had not abandoned his mother church plan, led to animosity between the two. While the bishop was traveling overseas, Draper used his political influence to have the state buy all the remaining land on the block. Doane, forced to abandon his longtime plan, succeeded in getting the legislature to limit the SED building to two stories, but Draper retaliated by making sure that those two stories, on Henry Hornbostel's colonnaded marble Beaux-Arts structure were as tall as possible, blocking the cathedral off from the rest of the city.
  While it was being built, the district would be home for two years to another resident later to become prominent, future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He lived in 4 Elk Street from 1910 to 1912 while serving as a state senator. Other houses nearby, and on Columbia, were being renovated, usually by Marcus T. Reynolds. In 1912, the Education Department building opened, followed four years later by Albany County's new courthouse and office building next to the Court of Appeals.
  During the time the district was preparing to receive its distinguishing feature. Starting in 1908, the block between Academy Park and Hawk Street was cleared to create Lafayette Park, named for the Marquis de Lafayette, who had stayed in Albany during 1778 and visited the city in the 1820s. In the process more than 30 houses were demolished, including those of Palmer and writer Leonard Kip. With the space opening up, more public statuary was erected. Daniel Chester French arranged for John Quincy Adams Ward's memorial sculpture to Union Army General Phillip Sheridan, an Albany native, to be posthumously placed on a pedestal east of the capitol designed by Lincoln Memorial architect Henry Bacon. In 1925, a J. Massey Rhind statue of another Albany military man, Revolutionary War General Phillip Schuyler, went up in front of City Hall. It was followed two years later by one of Joseph Henry, sculpted by John Flanagan, in front of the Albany Academy.
  West Capitol Park was expanded threefold from a modest plan submitted by the sons of Frederick Law Olmsted in 1898. In keeping with the ideals of the contemporary City Beautiful movement, it was reimagined as a "court of honor", surrounded by the Capitol, SED building and the newer Alfred E. Smith Building, towering over the older ones at the park's west side. Ideas by former state architects Franklin B. Ware and Lewis Pilcher were also incorporated. When it opened in 1930 it framed the capitol's west facade with a tree-lined entrance mall. A replica of Jean-Antoine Houdon's statue of George Washington, displayed in the rotunda of the Virginia State Capitol, was installed in the park in 1932 to commemorate the first president's bicentennial.
  The changes in the neighborhood were reflected in its building use. In 1930, the academy moved out of the building it had outgrown; after the city bought it eventually became the offices of the Albany City School District. Reynolds, in one of his final projects, supervised the renovation of the interior, a New Deal project funded by the Public Works Administration. The Pruyns had moved out of 17 Elk Street around 1910; their house eventually became the state headquarters of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. They were followed by most of the other socially prominent families who had called Elk home. The house at 4, where the young Henry James had visited his aunt almost a century before, likewise became home to another fraternal organization, the Moose International.
  Through the middle of the century the district remained stable, with no signifi
caption: The State Education Department Building
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