Albany, New York

USA / New York / Albany /
 city, capital city of state/province/region, draw only border, county seat
City with a population of 97,856 as of the 2010 Census. State capital and county seat of Albany County. The area was originally settled by Iroquois and Mohicans, who called it Sche-negh-ta-da and Pem-po-tu-wuth-ut, respectively. In 1540 French traders built a fort here that was soon abandoned. Henry Hudson visited the area in 1609 and the Dutch rebuilt the French fort in 1614 as Fort Nassau, named for the Dutch ruling house of Orange-Nassau. The surrounding areas of settlement were incorporated as the village of Bevenwyck in 1652.

When the English were ceded the land in 1664, the name was changed to Albany after the Duke of Albany, the Scottish title of the Duke of York, the eventual James II. It was chartered as a municipality in 1686. The Albany Congress met here in 1754 and endorsed Benjamin Franklin's Albany Plan to unite the 13 colonies. The political rivalry between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton was born here in the late 18th century. In 1797 the state capital was permanently moved here. Its location on the Hudson, especially after the construction of the Erie Canal, made the city a transportation hub.

timesunion.com/
www.albanyny.org/
www.albany.org/

albanyny.gov/_files/ZoningMap.pdf
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albany,_New_York
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   42°40'5"N   73°48'36"W

Comments

  • Moved/resized the rectangle. The original one went well north of the city limits, and failed to encompass downtown Albany, much less the Port of Albany. The new boundary is not perfect (the city limits shoot up a ways along Washington Avenue Extension, and I'm not 100% sure where the southern boundary lies, just that the city includes most or all of the Port), but at least it now includes the more generally important parts of the city.
  • Polygon redrawn based on data provided by NYS GIS Clearinghouse - http://www.nysgis.state.ny.us/gisdata/
This article was last modified 12 years ago