Excerpt from History and Description of the Capitol at Albany: From the "Albany Hand-Book for 1881," to Be Published in December, 1880 The foundation. - The first stone in the foundation was laid July 7, 1869, by John V. L. Pruyn. This foundation, although, of course, out of sight, and scarcely thought of by the ordinary visitor, is a wonder in itself. In the first place, excavations were made to an average depth of 15 43 - 100 feet below the surface. Then a bed of concrete, 4 feet thick, was laid constituting a stone floor which will grow harder and harder as time rolls on. The sub-basement extends down' 19 feet 4 inches, and contains cubic feet of stone, while the brick walls from 32 inches to five feet thick cen tain between ten and eleven million bricks The foundation of the main tower is 110 feet square at the base, tapering to 70 feet square. At the basement floor. In this sub-base ment are no less than 144 different apartments used for heating, storing and ventilating purposes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.