ADMINISTRATION- As provided by legislative enactment for cities of the second class. the government is vested in a mayor, elected bien nially: a city council, the president being elected at large and the aldermen by wards; and admin istrative departments constituted as follows: Finance—comptroller, treasurer, and a board of estimate composed of the mayor, comptroller, cor poration counsel, president of the common coun cil. city engineer, and treasurer: Public Works— commissioner, who appoints superintendents of water works and parks, city engineer; and a board of contract and supply, composed of the mayor, comptroller, commissioner of public works, corporation counsel, and city engineer; Public Safety—commissioner, who appoint-, chiefs of police and fire departments, with their subordinates, and a health officer and district health physicians; Assessment and Taxation— four assessors, two elected every two years for a term of four years; Charities and Correction comm6sioner, who appoints an overseer of the poor and assistants; Judiciary—one police court justice who holds office for six years, and three city court justices: Law—corpo•ation counsel, who appoints an assistant and subordinates. Of these officials, the comptroller, treasurer, asses sors, and police and city court justices are elect ed; all others are appointed by the executive. A sealer of weights and measures is also appointed by the mayor, and supervisors are chosen by popular election.
The annual expenditures of the city amount to about $2,800,000. the principal items of ex pense (for maintenance and operation) being about $100,000 for the police department, $140, 000 for the fire department. $290.000 for schools, $300.000 for bureau of waters, and $90,000 for street lighting.
Pop., 1870. 69.422: 1830, 90.753; 1390, 94.923; 1900, 94,151, including 17,700 persons of foreign birth and 1200 of negro descent.
llisTonv. Albany claims to be the second old est permanent settlement within the limits of the thirteen colonies, and has a much greater histori cal significance on account of its strategic im portance during the century of conflict between the English and French in America and in the American Revolution. As early as 1524. the French navigator Verrazano sailed up the Hud son River, and about 1540 a French trading post was set up near the present site of Albany. But this proved only temporary, and the continuous history of the place dates from the effective dist covery of the region by Henry Hudson in 1609. Hudson'a voyage was followed by Lutch traders, who, in 1614, established a trading : tation on Castle Island under the name of Fort 'Nassau. Three years later, the trading post was removed to the mainland and given the name Be The first actual settlers, however, were cigIteen \Valloon families, who arrived in 1624. During the same year, Fort Orange, or Aurania, wan built, near the site of the present State Capitol. Two years later an Indian war broke up the settlement for a time. In 1629, Killiaen Van Rensselaer obtained an extensive grant of land in the neighborhood of Fort Orange, and sent over settlers from Holland, who rented their land from him as their patroon, or lord of the manor. (See PATROON.) On the transfer of New
Netherlands to the English, in 1664, the name of Albany was given to the settlement, in honor of the Duke of York and Albany, afterward James II.; and shortly afterward a long-standing dispute as to the jurisdiction of the patroon over the earlier settlements was compromised. In 1686, Albany received a city charter from Governor Dongan, providing for an elected coun cil and a mayor to be appointed by the governor. The first mayor, Peter Schuyler, continued to serve until 1694. The settlement continued to be inhabited mainly by the Dutch, but the increase in the English population is indicated by the erection of an English church in 1714.
As a frontier town open to Indian attacks, Albany was protected not only by the fort, but by a stockade surrounding the compactly built area. During the French and Indian wars, the city was the storehouse for munitions of war, the rendezvous for the troops, and a place of safety for refugees and wounded soldiers. In 1754 there was held at Albany the first general Congress (see ALBANY CONVENTION) of all the colonies, at which plans of union were discussed.
Burgoyne's campaign in 1777 was directed against Albany, as the key to the situation in the north; but the battle of Saratoga preserved this strategic point to the patriots. During the next twenty years Albany was at times the head quarters of the State government.; in 1797 it was made the permanent capital of the State, and the first State house was built a few years later.
In 1820 Albany had a population of only 12.630; but the Erie Canal opened a new field for commercial activity, and brought a rapid development. By 1840 the population was 33, 7°_1, or nearly treble that of twenty years before; by 1860 it had reached 62,367, but since then the increase has been at a slower rate. In 1839 there began the "Anti-Rent War" (see ANTI RENTISM ) , the result of an attempt by the Van Rennsselaer heirs to collect the quit-rents on the old leases made in the pre-Revolutionary days. Albany has been visited by several disastrous fires, those in 1797 and 1848 being the most destructive. The l_wer part of the city has often been inundated by spring floods in the river. In 1886 the bicentennial of the incorporation of the city was celebrated with elaborate ceremo nies; and on January 6, 1S97, the centennial of the selection of the city as the State capital was also commemorated. In 1894 the Delavan House. for fifty years the resort of politicians and eminent men, was burned. See A. J. Weise, The History of the City of Albany (Albany, 1884) ; J. Munsell, The Annals of Albany, 10 umes (Albany, 1850-59), and Collections on the City of Albany, 4 volumes ( Albany, 1865-71) ; and a sketch in L. P. Powell's Historic Towns of the Middle N fates (New York. 1899),