Broadway – Livingston Avenue Historic District
Coordinates: 42 ° 39 ′ 28 " N , 73 ° 44 ′ 53" W.
The Broadway – Livingston Avenue Historic District is a landmarked area at the intersection of these two streets in Albany , New York . It includes 20 buildings, all of which are believed to be contributing , plus a Warren Truss truss railway bridge . In 1988 the area was designated a Historic District and added to the National Register of Historic Places .
It is the only intact concentration of 19th century residential and commercial architecture on Broadway north of the Downtown Albany Historic District . Most of these buildings are two- or three-story terraced houses, between which brick commercial buildings of comparable size stand. The buildings were built between 1829 and 1876, a time when the quarter prospered as the eastern end of the Erie Canal . The railroad bridge was built in 1900 to guide the New York Central Railroad over Broadway on Colonie Street .
As a result of urban regeneration programs , much of the area was demolished before the historic district was designated. Many of the buildings in the district were in disrepair at the time, and some of them have since been demolished, leaving some land unused. The remaining buildings show traces of the city's decline.
history
From the time it was founded in 1686 and for most of the 18th century, the city of Albany occupied only a small area, which corresponds to today's downtown and was surrounded by a palisade . According to the city's charter, the city extended northward a mile (1,609 meters) beyond the city walls to what is now Clinton Avenue . The land north of it was owned by the van Rensselaer family, who had been in charge of the area since the Dutch colonization .
In 1764 Stephen van Rensselaer II had the area north of Albany surveyed and a grid laid out on which the future roads were aligned. The land was parceled out and sold. It was originally constituted as the Town of Colonie. A thousand residents had settled here within two decades, and in 1815 the City of Albany was persuaded to annex Colonie. Colonie became the Fifth Ward of Albany.
For the next ten years this was the only change. The Erie Canal was completed in 1825, and the eastern terminus of the approximately 580-long waterway was where Colonie Street meets the Hudson River. The city built a large port district on the site and the North Broadway neighborhood began to grow. It was called the lumber district because lumber felled in the Adirondacks and western New York made up a large part of the cargo shipped over the Canal to Albany. New construction activity included both sawmills , where the wood that was brought in was processed, and the homes of those who became wealthy from the sawmills and ship transport. The defunct 788 Broadway townhouse was built during this early period and a grocery and general store shop soon opened on the first floor of the house.
Beginning of rail traffic
The railroad that reached Albany soon after the construction of the Canal also affected the area. With the opening of the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad in 1831 between Albany and Schenectady , one of the first steam-powered railroads in the United States began passenger service. For the first ten years, the cars that had been transported up the river to Albany were taken up the steep hills of State Street and put onto the Schenectady railroad tracks. In 1844 the railway line was relocated to its current route along the flatter gorge at Patroon Creek . A large loading complex was built nearby to reload cargo from trains to boats and ferries and reload it onto trains on the east bank. The necessary workers settled in the neighborhood, and small businesses to serve the residents opened in buildings like 802 Broadway.
One of those early-built houses, the defunct 799 Broadway, was converted into a police station in 1863, reflecting the neighborhood's growth. After the Civil War , a bridge was built, which somewhat reduced the economic importance of the district, although the commercial building 810-812 Broadway was built around that time. Traffic on the Erie Canal was displaced by improvements in rail traffic. In 1900 the iron truss bridge was built. The bridge construction was part of a project that saw a major redesign of the city's rail network. A new bridge over the Hudson River replaced the previous one, and Union Station was built downtown . The demolition of the Broadway station to make way for the new train station and the backfilling of the canal, which was laid to accommodate larger ships, robbed the district of its economic center.
The district experienced an economic decline in the course of the 20th century, and most of the buildings outside of today's historic district were demolished as part of an urban renewal program in the 1960s and 1970s. Other structures have been lost since its entry into the National Register.
geography
The historic district is a 3.5 acre (1.3 hectares ) large, irregularly shaped area that land on both sides of the two streets that gave the historic district name, north and west of their common crossing, including the north side of Colonie Street at the railway bridge, but without this crossing itself. The district is north of downtown Albany, roughly where the more densely built-up districts with their large commercial, residential and administrative buildings are replaced by the residential districts with their two-story buildings. To the east, the land slopes down to the banks of the Hudson River, about 500 m away.
To the west, the terrain slowly climbs towards Pearl Street ( New York State Route 32 ), where the Church of Holy Innocents , also on the National Register, borders the historic district at the intersection with Colonie Street. To the west of it is the extensive Arbor Hill Historic District – Ten Broeck Triangle . On the other side of Pearl Street is a modern residential complex with two high-rise buildings and numerous two-story apartment buildings. One block further south is Broadway Row , consisting of four brick townhouses, which is also on the National Register.
At the south end, the historic district includes the four properties on Livingston Street just west of the intersection with Broadway. The properties on the west side of Broadway up to and including the second parcel south of the intersection with Colonie Street also belong to the district. Its border then runs along the turn-off lane that picks up left-hand traffic at the same level into Colonie Street, while Broadway itself goes down, under the bridge, a little north of the course of the former railway line. From here it has an irregular course along a parking lot, then bends south and crosses Colonie Street and follows this to the west and then on Broadway south again. After enclosing some of the parcels on the east side of the road, the district boundary changes sides of the road and returns to its starting point.
Within the historic district, the west side of Broadway and the south side of Livingston Street are built up, mostly with platform buildings (with the exception of 69 Livingston Street, whose half-timbering dates from the time of the historical significance of the district, but has aluminum cladding ). The eastern part of the historic district now consists of undeveloped land, as does the area around the railway bridge. A row of trees flanks the railway line.
Significant structures
Of the original 20 buildings in the historic district, only eleven remain. Then there is the railway bridge.
- 70 and 72 Livingston Avenue . These two identical two-and-a-half-story neo-classical buildings once formed a row of four buildings and are the oldest surviving houses in the district. They date from around 1840.
- 810-812 Broadway . The three-story Italianate-style building was built in 1872 and is the most intricately designed of the district's remaining buildings. From a cornice above the shop front on the ground floor, two brick pilasters rise above the two upper floors. They flank the central facade of the building, which has five bays . Corbels support the elaborately shaped cornice on the eaves .
- Railroad Bridge , across Broadway on Colonie Street. This truss bridge , made of metal , originally carried four tracks, three of which are still there today. The structure is made up of three riveted Warren grids, which rest on stone abutments . The girders are below the deck on which the rails run. Today, passenger trains from Amtrak- operated Empire Service and freight trains from CSX Transportation cross the bridge, which is owned by CSX. When the bridge was added to the district, it belonged to Conrail . Conrail had objected to the inclusion.
Among the demolished buildings of the historic district, the neo-classical 788 Broadway townhouse was notable for its fluted Doric columns in antis . There was a cornice and a frieze with meander motifs on its eaves . The house, built in 1829, was the oldest building in the historic district until it was demolished. Across the street on what is now the wasteland was 799 Broadway. This building underwent major changes in 1863 when it was converted into a police station. The underlying building with three floors and four bays from 1835 in the classic style remained, but was supplemented in the Italianate style. The arch of the main entrance was original, but the iron window sills, the frieze panels and the three-part cornice with the elaborate corbels were added at the time. A parapet of bricks and the slate roof were completed a decade later. Even later, in the early years of the 20th century, the entrance steps were removed and replaced by an entrance at street level, and large windows were installed on the ground floor.
See also
supporting documents
- ^ National Register Information System . In: National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service . Retrieved March 13, 2009.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Raymond W. Smith: National Register of Historic Places Registration: Broadway-Livingston Avenue Historic District ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . September 1987. Archived from the original on December 10, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved on October 18, 2010. See also: 12 accompanying photographs ( Memento of the original from September 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
