The former YMCA building in Albany hosted an early basketball game

The former Young Men's Christian Association Building in Albany, New York, is a Romanesque Revival structure located at Steuben Street 1. Built in the 1880s, the building features a two-story foundation of rough-cut masonry with brownstone trim, supporting three stories of brick and brownstone. A prominent flat-roofed round turret begins at the second story on the southeast corner, topped with a steeply pitched gabled slate roof. At street level, the Pearl Street Pub wraps around the south facade, adjacent to a two-story segmented archway with a recessed stone stairway.

The building was a pioneer of indoor athletics, housing the first gymnasium in upstate New York and one of the earliest indoor swimming pools in the United States. Several years after its construction, it hosted the first basketball game played away from Springfield College, the site where the sport was invented. The structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and was further included as a contributing property when the Downtown Albany Historic District was designated two years later.

To the north, the building at 64 Pearl was annexed to the YMCA. While much of the original finish has been lost due to alterations and damage over the years, several original features remain. The main block preserves its south stairwell, first-floor door and window surrounds, and a main parlor fireplace with a large ogee-shaped mantel. The basement swimming pool retains its original arcade, and the original gymnasium occupies much of the lower floors, while original dormitory rooms remain on the upper levels.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons