ALBANY, N.Y. -- The SUNY Administration Building at the base of State Street is one of Albany’s crown jewels that’s been in our skyline for the last one hundred years. The building tells the tale of Albany’s history right up to the Half Moon weathervane.

“There are several locations where there are beavers, particularly on the north wing of the building, an homage to Albany’s Dutch heritage," said Bill Brandow, Project Manager at John G. Waite Associates. "But there are a lot of faces and creatures around the building.”

A lot may be putting it mildly. The SUNY Administration building is absolutely littered with devils, ogres, a guy that looks an awful lot like Ben Franklin, and gargoyles.

To see a particular carving with a certain human face we needed to go up all the way to the central tower’s top floor. And we weren’t going to just see any ordinary gargoyle.

"We’re looking south out of the central tower of SUNY Plaza towards what was originally constructed as the Albany Evening Journal Building," said Brandow. "Teddy Roosevelt is on the south tower of the building." 

Yes, Teddy Roosevelt: Rough Rider, former New York State governor, heralded President of the United States, and... Albany gargoyle.

"Roosevelt was moved to the back and just overlooks the roof, which you can only see from the room we’re in now. Because he and Boss Barnes had a falling out in the nineteen teens."

William Barnes, the Republican boss of Albany and owner of the "Albany Evening Journal," sued the former president for libel.  In 1915 at the Onondaga County Courthouse in Syracuse, Teddy Roosevelt won the case on testimony from a future political hall of famer: a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The rest, they say, is history. Roosevelt died in 1919, a year after the South Tower was completed, never patching up his friendship with Billy Barnes.

Now his gargoyle sits shunned against the roofline for the rest of time.