In 1971 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, one of seven buildings housing a state's highest court currently so recognized.

Rector's design incorporates all three classical orders in the building's rotunda and uses stone arches to support the ceilings in an early attempt at fireproofing.

Henry Hobson Richardson designed the courtroom, originally located in the nearby state capitol in the 1880s and described by a visiting Lord Coleridge as "the finest ... in the world".

An early 21st-century project removed the cupola, added small wings on both sides and completely overhauled the building's internal infrastructure as well as restoring much of the original interior decoration.

[11] In the surrounding neighborhood are many similarly large buildings, most of them governmental or institutional and contributing properties to their historic districts.

South, across Pine, is Albany's City Hall, a stone Romanesque Revival building by Henry Hobson Richardson from the 1880s, also listed on the Register individually.

Just to its south, visible from the Court of Appeals building through Corning Park behind City Hall, is St. Peter's Episcopal Church,[12] a French Gothic-style edifice by Richard Upjohn and his son.

Its modest scale is in contrast to the monumental New York State Education Department Building, visible across Lafayette Park.

East of the Court of Appeals building, across Lodge Street, is St. Mary's Church, home to the city's oldest Roman Catholic congregation and another listed property that contributes to the Downtown Albany Historic District.

It is faced with load-bearing marble blocks,[10] laid as thick as five feet (1.5 m) at the basement level, on a concrete foundation.

[2] The first floor has a library and lounge for attorneys, and the John Jay Room, for public events and overflow viewing of oral arguments via closed-circuit television.

[14] All seven judges'[b] chambers are on the second floor, along with their library and the conference room where they meet to cast votes on cases after hearing arguments.

[9] Oil portraits of past Court of Appeals judges line the walls up to the 22-foot (6.7 m) carved plaster ceiling.

[14] Created in 1777 during the Revolution, the government of the state of New York did not assume full governmental responsibilities for its territory until the end of the war and independence.

The trustees acquired the current land and commissioned local architect Henry Rector to design the building.

[14] According to architectural critic Talbot Hamlin, Rector's design "proclaimed the complete triumph of the Greek Revival in the Albany region."

[2] No other buildings of Rector's survive except for a row of houses on Westerlo Street in Albany's Pastures Historic District.

One was the use of the stone groin vaults to support the ceilings instead of the timber framing common at the time, an early attempt at fireproofing.

In the latter, Henry Hobson Richardson, supervising a construction process that had become delayed since it began in the early 1870s from Thomas Fuller's original plan, designed an ornate wooden courtroom with carved oak walls and furniture.

By 1909 the judges and lawyers alike were complaining that the court's capitol space was inadequate to its modern legal needs.

[14] Even though the fire that ravaged the capitol in 1911 made the need for new court space more pressing, Ware refused to endorse the report, saying the renovation proposed was inadequate.

In keeping with the wishes of Chief Judge Willard Bartlett, Pilcher's most significant change to the building was a wing on the east to accommodate Richardson's courtroom, which could be moved to State Hall with the exception of its original ceiling.

[c] On the interior of the existing building, the rotunda was faced in dark yellow faux Caen stone, and the judges' library, conference room and individual chambers were all painted in shades of cream and lit with pendant drop-globes.

The state's Department of Public Works reported that the portico was in danger of collapsing, the interior was looking shabby, and the electrical wiring and heating needed to be replaced.

They heard cases in the Appellate Division courtroom at the nearby county courthouse, while they received temporary chambers at the capitol.

The clerk of courts and his staff took their temporary quarters at an old storage building at Lodge Street and Maiden Lane.

[14] Early in the renovation, a short circuit in the elevator machine room started a serious fire that destroyed the roof and dome and badly damaged the rotunda.

Work continued, and shortly afterward another serious problem was discovered when excavations around the foundation disclosed that the eastern corners of the building had each sunk 5 inches (13 cm) since 1842, resulting in severe damage to floors, windows, lintels and the interior arches.

Inside the dome a 34-foot–wide (10 m) mural by Eugene Savage, The Romance of the Skies, depicts the three seasons—fall, winter and spring—during which the court sits.

[18] As the building had been listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, since its last renovation, preservation and restoration were as important as the expansions.