Alfred E. Smith Building

One Commerce Plaza, also known as the Twin Towers, is an office building located at 99 Washington Avenue in downtown Albany, New York. At 20 floors and 252 feet (77 meters), it is the thirteenth tallest structure in Albany. Although it is a privately owned office tower, much of the building is occupied by New York State government offices. Its lobby features several restaurants. One Commerce Plaza was completed in 1971 and was designed by Julius Tauss in the Modernist style. It originally had a black glass and white marble exterior. For a few years in the 2000s, the building was draped in white plastic sheathing. This preceded an exterior renovation, when the marble panels of the original facade were replaced with metal composite ones because the marble was too thick for exterior use. On April 30, 2007, a chunk of marble fell off One Commerce Plaza, injuring three people. It was reported that high wind gusts were responsible for the chunk letting loose from the building, which was under renovation at the time.

The Albany Institute of History & Art (AIHA) is a museum in Albany, New York, United States, "dedicated to collecting, preserving, interpreting and promoting interest in the history, art, and culture of Albany and the Upper Hudson Valley region". It is located on Washington Avenue (New York State Route 5) in downtown Albany. Founded in 1791, it is among the oldest museums in the United States.Several other institutions have merged over time to become today's Albany Institute. The earliest were learned societies devoted to the natural sciences, and for a time it was the state legislature's informal advisory body on agriculture. Robert R. Livingston was the first president. Joseph Henry delivered his first paper on electromagnetism to the Institute. Its collections of animal, vegetable and mineral specimens from state surveys eventually became the foundations of the New York State Museum. Later in the century it became more focused on the humanities, and eventually merged with the Albany Historical and Art Society. It has had its present name since 1926. Over the course of the 20th century it has become more firmly established as a regional art museum. The institute's three-building complex includes the late 19th-century Rice Building, the only freestanding Beaux-Arts mansion in the city, designed by Richard Morris Hunt and donated to the institute by one of its former benefactors. Its main building is a 1920s Classical Revival structure designed by local architect Marcus T. Reynolds. A more modern glass structure connects the two. The original two buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. At the beginning of the 21st century, the institute completed an extensive renovation in which the entrance building was constructed and new climate-controlled storage space for the collections was built.

The New York State Education Building (commonly known as the State Education Building) is a state office building in Albany, New York. It houses offices of the New York State Education Department (NYSED) and was formerly home to the New York State Museum and New York State Library. Designed by Henry Hornbostel in the Beaux-Arts style and opened in 1912, the building is known for its expansive colonnade.

The former Harmanus Bleecker Library is located at the intersection of Washington Avenue (New York State Route 5) and Dove Street in Albany, New York, United States. It is a brick and stone Classical Revival building constructed in the 1920s. In 1996 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Designed by notable local architects, the Fuller & Robinson Company, it was the first building in the city intended to be used exclusively as a library, and is considered one of city's best buildings in its architectural style. Along with the nearby University Club, built shortly afterwards, it was Fuller's last major work in the city where he had practiced most. It took its name from Harmanus Bleecker, a prominent Albany politician and benefactor whose estate provided the funds for its construction. It has since been adapted to serve as office space.

The University Club of Albany, New York, was founded at the start of the 20th century. It is currently housed in a Colonial Revival brick building at the corner of Washington Avenue (New York State Route 5) and Dove Street. In 2011 that building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Young men who had recently graduated from college founded the club in the early 20th century as a place to gather until they had achieved the social status necessary to follow their fathers into the older Fort Orange Club. It met in one founder's house for several years until it could purchase a house that stood at the current location, on which it built a wing. When that house burned down in the 1920s, Albany architects the Fuller & Robinson company designed the current main building to replace it. It was his last major work in the city. The club has played a role in the city's social and cultural life since its founding. Speakers at its events in its early years included President William Howard Taft, Andrew Carnegie, Earl Grey and various governors of New York. Its amenities include a library, dining facilities, meeting rooms, and one of the oldest bowling alleys in the country, which may also be the oldest private bowling alley in continual use in the state.

The Dr. Hun Houses were located on Washington Avenue (New York State Route 5) on the western edge of central Albany, New York, United States. They were a pair of brick buildings constructed a century apart, the older one around 1830, in the Federal style. In 1972, three months after they were listed on the National Register of Historic Places, they were demolished and subsequently delisted.The older house was considered one of the finest Federal homes in the city. Its architect is unknown, although it has been speculated to be Philip Hooker. It was likely built for John F. Bacon, a lawyer and clerk of the State Senate, who may only have lived there for a year and eventually sold it to another lawyer. Near the end of the 19th century it was acquired by Dr. Henry Hun, who adapted the house for his practice and built a smaller, architecturally sympathetic house toward the rear of the property as a residence.

Wilborn Temple First Church of God in Christ Inc. is a Pentecostal church in Albany, New York.

The New York State Capitol, the seat of the New York state government, is located in Albany, the capital city of the U.S. state of New York. The capitol building is part of the Empire State Plaza complex on State Street in Capitol Park. Housing the New York State Legislature, the building was completed in 1899 at a cost of US$25 million (equivalent to $703 million in modern dollars), making it the most expensive government building of its time. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, then included as a contributing property when the Lafayette Park Historic District was listed in 1978. The New York State Capitol was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1979.

On the morning of March 29, 1911, a fire destroyed substantial portions of the New York State Capitol, including vast holdings of the New York State Library and the New York State Museum. It destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of documents and books. There was one casualty, Samuel Abbott, a watchman.

Albany ( (listen) AWL-bən-ee) is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York and the seat of Albany County. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about 10 miles (16 km) south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about 135 miles (220 km) north of New York City. The city is known for its architecture, commerce, culture, institutions of higher education, and rich history. It is the economic and cultural core of the Capital District of the State of New York, which comprises the Albany–Schenectady–Troy Metropolitan Statistical Area, including the nearby cities and suburbs of Troy, Schenectady, and Saratoga Springs. With an estimated population of 1.1 million in 2013, the Capital District is the third most populous metropolitan region in the state. As of 2020, Albany's population was 99,224. The Hudson River area was originally inhabited by Algonquian-speaking Mohican (Mahican), who called it Pempotowwuthut-Muhhcanneuw. The area was settled by Dutch colonists who, in 1614, built Fort Nassau for fur trading and in 1624, built Fort Orange. In 1664, the English took over the Dutch settlements, renaming the city Albany in honor of the Duke of Albany, the future James II. 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 one of the oldest surviving settlements of the original British thirteen colonies; no other city in the United States has been continuously chartered as long.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, connecting to the Great Lakes, and was home to some of the earliest railroads in the world. In the 1920s a powerful political machine controlled by the Democratic Party arose in Albany. In the latter part of the 20th century, Albany's population shrank because of urban sprawl and suburbanization. In the 1990s, the New York State Legislature approved for the city a US$234 million building and renovation plan, which spurred redevelopment downtown. In the early 21st century, Albany's high-technology industry grew, with great strides in nanotechnology.

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 (NRHP). 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 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,: 70–74  lived there at different times. Henry James would recall the neighborhood from his childhood visits to his aunt as "vaguely portentous, like beasts of the forest not wholly exorcised." Two significant technological accomplishments—the development of the first working electromagnet and the construction of the first cantilevered arch bridge: 6, 10–11 —also took place within it. Henry Hobson Richardson, Philip Hooker and Marcus T. Reynolds are among the architects with buildings in the district. The park that gives the district its name was not actually built until the early 20th century, after larger government buildings had begun to dominate the area. In it and the other three parks are statues commemorating George Washington and Albany natives like Civil War general Phillip Sheridan and electromagnet discoverer Joseph Henry. John Quincy Adams Ward and J. Massey Rhind are among the sculptors represented. Although the district has been affected by modern trends—most of the Elk Street houses are now offices for various organizations that lobby the state government—it has remained mostly intact. It remains a vital part of Albany's public sphere, with the parks having hosted everything from benefit sales for soldiers' medical care during the Civil War to Occupy Albany's tent encampments and protests during the 2010s.

Albany Public Library (APL) is a public library system serving the city of Albany, New York. APL also operates as the Central Library for the Upper Hudson Library System, a resource sharing consortium which unites public library services across twenty-nine member libraries in Albany County and Rensselaer County. Governed by a publicly elected board of trustees, APL is a school district public library with a budget largely funded by a tax levy presented annually to registered voters in the City School District of Albany. The library has seven branches located in various neighborhoods of Albany, New York. The branches are circulating libraries that are open to the general public. The library was developed in the 19th century, founded from society libraries and the wealth of private citizens, and currently holds a collection of 250,000 items.