New York State Capitol Floor Plans.

April 15, 1876, American Architect and Building News,

1st Floor



2nd Floor



3rd Floor



Altered Assembly Chamber, as published in American Architect and Building News, Dec. 14, 1878, page 197



4th Floor



Below, from Cecil Roseberry's "Capitol Story" (1982) page 24; captioned: "Main floor plan as laid out by Fuller and Gilman. Note the Tower Hall, the Central Court, and the suite of Governor's offices along the left side."




Also from Cecil Roseberry's "Capitol Story" (1982) page 64: "Portion of 3rd floor plan." As fleshed out here, however, Roseberry removes the two mighty furnace flues in the northwest and southwest corners of the "Grand Central Court," leaving the massive corner piers, big enough to be small rooms, as solid masonry features. Since the boilers for heat and steam-power were removed from the Capitol basement to a remote facility shortly after the building opened that would have made sense in the 1960's and 1980's. So why did Paul Mercer and Vickie Weiss put these flues back in on the floor plans they published in 2011? What else have they "dicked" with on the plans, I wonder?

Third Floor:



Fourth Floor:







And look how much bigger the Western "Million Dollar" Staircase got from Fuller & Gilman's original plans for the feature. Later architects stole a good 12 feet of width from each of the flanking "open courts," originally designed to provide the light and air occupants complained about a lack of. Since this stairway was one of the final constructions in the 1890's, one might think planners would have minimized its realization so late in the game, maybe even realizing that the populace had always preferred taking elevators to hiking up the equivalent of eight flights of stairs---but instead they doubled-down on psychological effect---such as that which appears to have resulted from hoards of mutant mud-wasps building their nests in every available nook and cranny.