Kingston's Senate House: New York's First Capitol

In April of seventeen seventy-seven, while the Revolutionary War raged, New York's first constitutional convention met in the town of Kingston and adopted the state's founding constitution, one of the most influential in American history. The new state senate then gathered in the stone house of a merchant named Abraham Van Gaasbeek on Fair Street. They met there for roughly a month before British troops under General Vaughan burned Kingston to the ground on October sixteenth, seventeen seventy-seven, forcing the government to flee.

Van Gaasbeek's house survived the fire. It became the Senate House State Historic Site in eighteen eighty-seven and was the very first building in Kingston listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a stone room where a new government held its first meeting before the British tried to erase it.