Albany's 1912 Beaux-Arts State Office Building with a Long Colonnade
89 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12234
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages on public exterior; interior access during business hours with security
Cost
Free
Free public exterior access; interior access during state-office business hours with security screening.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved Washington Avenue sidewalk; large colonnade and steps at the entrance
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1912 · Beaux-Arts Architecture · Henry Hornbostel Design · New York State Government Heritage
The New York State Education Building opened in 1912 on Washington Avenue in Albany as one of the most ambitious state office buildings of its era. Designed by architect Henry Hornbostel, the building's defining feature is a 36-column Corinthian colonnade running along Washington Avenue — at the time of completion, one of the longest colonnades in the world.
The building originally housed three of New York State's major cultural and administrative institutions: the New York State Museum, the New York State Library, and the New York State Education Department. The Museum and Library were later relocated to the Cultural Education Center at the south end of the Empire State Plaza in the 1970s, though an annex containing books, journals, and newspapers remains in the basement of the Education Building.
The building includes a large safety vault — described in historical records as 15 by 43 feet — built into the basement with steel boxes and cases for the original Library and Museum holdings. The Education Department continues to occupy the building as its headquarters. Public access is permitted on the ground floor for state business; deeper basement levels are not accessible to the public.
Sources
The Education Building's resident ghost story is a workplace-oral-tradition piece told primarily by state employees who use the lower levels of the building for archival research. The figure is nicknamed Jason — the original Shadowlands listing notes that the name has no particular significance and was assigned by long-term staff. Local tradition holds that during the building's construction, a worker disappeared while concrete was being poured for the lower basement, his lunch and keys found at the site but his body never recovered. The story holds that he was inadvertently entombed in the foundation.
We found no construction-period news coverage corroborating the disappearance, and the lower-basement detail is not documented in published building histories accessible through search. We treat the construction-worker incident as building folklore rather than verified record.
Reported activity is uniformly benign in the oral-tradition retellings. Researchers traveling down to the basement archives describe a brief cold sensation in the freight elevator that passes quickly, lights cycling on after being turned off, and an occasional pattern of books falling off shelves that happen to be exactly the title someone was searching for. Some staff report a sense of being watched while working alone among the stacks. No physical-harm incidents appear in the lore — the figure is described as helpful and the storytelling tradition is affectionate. The building remains an active state office; do not attempt unauthorized access to the basement levels.
Notable Entities
View the New York State Education Building's monumental Washington Avenue facade — 36 Corinthian columns forming one of the longest colonnades in the world when the building was completed in 1912. The interior houses New York State Education Department offices; basement and sub-basement areas are not open for public exploration.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Troy, NY
West Hall, the oldest building on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus in Troy, New York, was built in 1869 as Troy Hospital, operated by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. In 1923 it became a Catholic high school, and in 1953 it was incorporated into RPI, where it now houses the school's arts and humanities programs.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPPoughkeepsie, NY
Christ Episcopal Church is an active Poughkeepsie parish whose congregation traces to 1773. The current brick Gothic Revival building, designed by architect William Appleton Potter, was completed in May 1888 on a site that had been the city's old English Burial Ground, whose graves were relocated to Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPEllicottville, NY
Hencoop Hollow Road in Ellicottville, Cattaraugus County, was home to a one-room schoolhouse that served the rural farming community in the 19th century. Like many such structures across Western New York, the building was eventually decommissioned and converted into a private residence as school centralization took hold in the mid-20th century. A small community cemetery adjacent to the road dates to the 1850s.