suggests that at least some type of punitory building was built on the site during his term. George Howell and Jonathan Tenney, in their book Bi-centennial History of Albany, cite reports from 1646 describing the building as a substantial (at least for its time) three-story structure, with the lower floor built of stone and used as a jail. By contrast, another Albany historian, Cuyler Reynolds, writes that the Stadt Huys was not built until 1673. Both historians agree that it stood at the northeast corner of today's Hudson Avenue and Broadway, the current site of the SUNY System Administration Building. The Stadt Huys officially became city hall when the Dongan Charter incorporated Albany as a city in 1686. A 1695 engraved map of Albany depicts the Stadt Huys at that location. A new city hall was probably built on the site around 1740; historians at the New York State Museum (NYSM) put its completion date as the following year. The city government, quickly outgrowing the space, was able to secure constructionfunds from the provincial government. This building retained the Dutch name, even though it was new and the English had been in control of New York for more than 75 years. The NYSM describes the new Stadt Huys as a three-story brick structure, adding that it was "more substantial" than its predecessor. The new building was the third-largest in Albany, surpassed only by that era's local Dutch church and Fort Albany. The roof of the new structure was gabled and topped with a cupola and belfry. Howell and Tenney say the original Stadt Huys was in use for at least 160 years (meaning a replacement structure would not have been needed until 1795 at the earliest), which contradicts with accounts of the new Stadt Huyss construction in the 1740s. In 1754, the Stadt Huys was the site of the Albany Congress where Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania presented the Albany Plan of Union, the first formal proposal to unite the British American colonies. The intent was to defend against aggressions of the French to the north rather than become independent from the British crown. It was never adopted by the British Parliament; later it was seen as an important precursor to the United States Constitution. A month prior to the meeting, Franklin published his Join, or Die political cartoon, a graphical representation of the plan. During the Revolutionary War, City Hall