1911 New York State Capitol fire
On the morning of March 29, 1911, a fire destroyed large parts of the New York State Capitol in Albany, including much of the New York State Library and the New York State Museum. The blaze began around 2:10 a.m., likely starting from electrical wiring or a dropped cigarette, and spread from the third-floor library to the floors above. The worst damage was on the northwest side; lower floors were mostly damaged by water and smoke. The building had been built from 1867 to 1899, with the library and museum on the upper floors and other government offices, including the governor’s, inside the complex.
The Albany Fire Department arrived at about 2:42 a.m. with about 125 firefighters and 13 horse-drawn fire wagons. Authorities evacuated nearby streets as thousands watched. One person died: Samuel Abbott, a watchman. An archaeologist, Arthur C. Parker, tried to save Iroquois artifacts, smashing display cases with a Seneca tomahawk and saving about 50 of roughly 500 pieces.
The fire, known as The Great Fire of 1911, caused massive losses. Almost the entire library collection—hundreds of thousands of items—was destroyed, though some important documents survived in fireproof safes, including a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation and Washington’s Farewell Address. A copy of the Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds stayed safe because it had been loaned out. The New York Museum also lost thousands of artifacts. The fire happened just days after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, and together those tragedies helped spur fire-safety reforms in New York.
After the blaze, the library was moved to the New York State Education Building, and work began to replace what had burned. In the years that followed, officials and the public reflected on the loss to the state’s cultural heritage, and in 2011 there were exhibitions about the fire to remember its impact.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 01:52 (CET).