In 1778, in the heat of the American Revolution, John Jay was New York’s Chief Justice of the Council of Safety, responsible for framing the Constitution of the State and for developing a new form of government to replace colonial rule. When the Legislature was going to be summoned to convene in Kingston that August, Jay’s biographer George Bellew wrote,
“It is curious to notice, in the light of subsequent history, that Jay ‘casually hinted at holding the first session of the legislature at Albany,’ but found ‘a general disinclination to it.’ ‘Some object,’ he wrote to [Gen.] Schuyler, ‘to the expense of living there, as most intolerable, and others say that, should Albany succeed in having both the great officers, the next step will be to make it the capital of the State.'” The British burned Kingston in October, 1777, and Jay removed the state’s nascent Supreme Court (as it was known then) to Albany, well distant from his farm in Fishkill. “In those days the inconveniences of life were many even for a judge at Albany. ‘Had it not been for fish,’ according to Jay, ‘the people of this town would have suffered for want of food, occasioned by the refusal of the farmers to sell at the stipulated prices.'”
The objection would remain for some time, but eventually Jay’s hint came to fruition. The rest of government moved around among Albany, Kingston, Hurley, Poughkeepsie and even New York, until Albany was named the state capital in 1797, with the first meeting of the Legislature in its permanent home in 1798. John Jay was the state’s second Governor then, and took up residence at 66-68 State Street.