Home to many historic warehouses and row houses, North Albany continues to be an important industrial neighborhood.

[2] This area north of the original city limits of Albany as delineated by the Dongan Charter was referred to as the colonie.

[5] Also due to the canal's influence factories began to locate in North Albany producing a varied collection of goods including books, stoves, carriages, and machine tools.

Large numbers of Irish who built the Erie Canal and continued to work in the factories of North Albany lent to the area the name of Limerick.

[12] In 1865 Peter Cagger purchased the lot at the corner of Broadway and North Ferry Street for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, which they used as the St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum.

[13] The hospital moved to its current location on New Scotland Avenue in 1930, the building on Broadway staying open as an out-patient clinic for another year before closing permanently.

[15] Many of North Albany's former turnpikes continued to be of importance to long-distance travel throughout the 20th century as evidenced by the designation of several US and state routes.

[26] During the 1960s the Albany municipal landfill was located on the site of a former river water filtration plant that operated from the early 20th century to the 1930s.

[27] Located along Erie Boulevard on approximately 45 acres (18 ha) between Interstate 787 (I-787), Interstate 90 (I-90), Erie Boulevard, and the Albany County Wastewater Treatment Plant, it was closed to municipal waste in 1969 in favor of a new landfill in the Albany Pine Bush area in the western section of the city.

[29] The city's Department of Public Works garage was built on a part of the landfill,[30] with land near by used for the creation of the 92,000 square feet (8,500 m2) Erie Boulevard Commerce Park on 16.6 acres (6.7 ha).

[35] In 2000 Denis Foley and Andrew Wolfe, two Union College professors, unearthed in an archeological excavation the first weigh lock of the Erie Canal.

[36] In the 1990s and 2000s (decade) the blue-collar warehouse and manufacturing backbone of North Albany began to move upscale towards more eclectic reuse of industrial and service infrastructure.

The roughly 100 acres (40 ha) affected were changed from industrial use only to C-3, Central Business District which allowed for sports stadiums, museums, hotels, apartment buildings, and general commercial uses.

In addition to changing times in leadership, the church community saw fewer of its traditional Irish congregation and increasing numbers of minorities.

The Corning Homes name was dropped so as not to continue to stigmatize the low-income housing residents in an attempt to blend them in with the rest of the North Albany neighborhood.

The gasworks in the 19th century produced a crude form of natural gas for gaslight street lamps using coal gasification methods.

[54] Along the southern boundary of North Albany lies a railroad owned by CSXT (the Chicago Line), which is also used by Amtrak.

Loudonville Road connects North Pearl Street and Broadway northwest to US 9 and Van Rensselaer Boulevard.

I-90 cuts through the neighborhood and intersects with I-787 along the Hudson River crossing the Patroon Island Bridge into the city and county of Rensselaer.

[57] Nipper is composed of a composite body over a steel frame, and sports an aircraft warning beacon on his left ear, the dog can be seen as far as 5 miles (8.0 km) away in East Greenbush.

[62] The City of Albany declared a state of emergency in 2022 after pieces of the building's wall fell near train tracks below.