Albany County, New York
The city of Albany was the first municipality within this large county, founded as the village (dorp in Dutch) of Beverwyck by the Director-General of New Amsterdam, Pieter Stuyvesant, who also established the first court in Albany. Albany was established as a city in 1686 by Governor Dongan through the Dongan Charter after the English took over the colony. Schenectady to the west was given a patent with some municipal rights in 1684 and became a borough in 1765.
Port of Albany–Rensselaer
The Albany Port District was established in 1925 under New York law Chapter 192. This was only four years after the interstate compact that created the Port of New York Authority (later renamed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey). In 1932 Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled a modern port to replace the aging infrastructure of the Albany Basin and the lumber district along the Erie Canal in the North Albany neighborhood. The port was constructed on around on Westerlo Island in the southern end of Albany along with approximately across the river in the city of Rensselaer. The grain elevator at the port, built during the original construction in 1932, was the largest in the world and as of 2008 is still considered to be the largest in the United States east of the Mississippi River.
The area of Albany's original port (the Albany Basin) has been covered by Interstate 787 and the Corning Preserve (Riverfront Park) since the very early 1970s. In 1979 remnants of the basin wall were excavated from the preserve's lagoon by Phillip Lord working for the New York State Museum.