Central Troy Historic District
The Central Troy Historic District is the traditional economic center of Troy in New York , United States. It was inscribed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, replacing five other Historic Districts that previously existed on the site of the newly registered area. For the most part, it corresponds to the development plan drawn up by the city .
On an area of around 38 hectares, there are 659 buildings, 17 other structures and three other objects that contribute to the ensemble as contributing property . These include two of the three National Historic Landmarks within the city , the Troy Savings Bank and the W. & LE Gurley Building, as well as various other buildings that are also entered separately in the register. The architectural styles in the monument protection area mainly reflect the outstanding importance of the city as a center of textile processing in the second half of the 19th century, but encompass a span of almost 150 years of city history.
geography
The irregularly shaped area was formed along the axes of US Highway 4 and New York State Route 2 , both of which split into one-way streets , and is bordered to the north by Grand Street. At the intersection with fourth street (northbound Route 4), the boundary swings south and follows the street a few blocks to Broadway at the US Post Office Troy , where it turns west, one block further from southbound Route 4 the River Follow Street southwest. Before reaching the new City Hall, the borough swings along Congress Street to the banks of the Hudson River , where it runs back two blocks east. Roughly between River Street and First Street, the curb turns south again and runs parallel to an avenue to enclose the older parts of Russell Sage College . Immediately south of the school, she turns east and follows Ferry Street (Eastbound Route 2) to First Street and then continues south again.
In this way, the district boundary runs to the southernmost point on Adams Street, which it follows to Fourth Street to the east and there bends to the north at St. Paul's Episcopal Church . It runs along the rear parcel boundary on the east side of the street to Ferry Street, where it includes some buildings in an easterly direction, and then returns to Fourth Street. At Congress Street, the curb turns east again and then follows Williams Street north to State Street. From then on, the district boundary runs east to Fifth Avenue and follows it in an irregular course back to the intersection with Grand Street.
The boundary of the historic district was laid out in such a way that it includes as many of the city's historic buildings as possible. Most of them were built between 1787 and 1940; this time is considered to be the period of greatest importance for the monument protection district. While it is inevitable that some newer buildings will be within its perimeter, where it was possible, buildings that were built in the mid-20th century were excluded, such as the new town hall, various public housing buildings and the Uncle Sam Atrium , a large shopping center .
To the north and south of the district there are other parts of Troy that also have historic buildings; however, these quarters were not yet strongly developed during the period of historical importance for the protection of monuments in Troy. These buildings are mostly residential and in the north there are some industrial buildings.
The entire district is densely built, with the only major open area being Washington Park near its southern end. Most of the main streets and the center are lined with multi-storey buildings that are primarily used for commercial purposes, but the upper floors are used for mixed offices and apartments. There are mostly smaller townhouses on the side streets. With the exception of the Gurley Building, there was or is no industrially used structure within the conservation area.
history
From founding to obtaining city rights
Before independence , only a few Dutch settlers settled in the Hudson River valley north of Albany . In 1787 a group from New England moved west and convinced one of these settlers, Jacob Vanderhyden, to sell them a large piece of land, which they divided up and named Troy. The line dividing the property of the Dutch settler and the New England people was called Grand Division Street; the name was later shortened to Grand Street.
The city map was laid out like the street grid of Philadelphia , after River Street, the early center of the settlement, the north-south streets further away from the river were numbered consecutively. The lots on River Street ran from the street to the riverbank. The steep bank allowed the construction of multi-storey warehouses and grain houses , which were close to the reloading points on the river.
In 1793 the new settlement was designated a county seat . Two years later, visiting La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt discovered that the “nice and numerous houses” and existing businesses all participate in trading on the river. "The sight of these activities is really charming," he said in one of the earliest published descriptions of the city. In 1798 Troy was registered as a Village .
The growth continued and the population of the village tripled in the first fifteen years of the 19th century. This led to the registration of the settlement as a city in 1816 . In 1807, another outside visitor - the British painter John Lambert - reported that the city had grown significantly since the time she saw de la Rochefoucauld a dozen years earlier:
“ Troy is a well built town consisting mostly of a street of handy red brick houses ... There are two or three short streets that branch off from the main street, but it is in the latter where all the major shops, warehouses are and stores are located. It has several excellent restaurants and bars. The houses are all new and elegant and built with great taste and simplicity, although comfort and convenience seem to have guided the architect more than ornamentation. The deep red bricks, carefully walled, give the buildings a touch of cuteness and cleanliness rarely found in old cities. "
Troy during industrialization and the civil war
Little has survived in Troy from that time, as a fire that started in a stall on First Street in 1820 destroyed most of what was then town. A pillar at 225 River Street bears a memorial stone indicating that the fire was stopped at this point. In contrast to ancient Troy , which gave the city its name, Troy was quickly rebuilt, with newer brick and commercial buildings that were built according to stricter rules and replaced the old structures, and expansion was fueled. The 1827 Federal style by Philip Hooker planned Hart-Cluett Mansion along Second Street is one of the best surviving buildings from this period.
In 1824, a state gazetteer repeated earlier descriptions of River Street as the city's commercial center. That same year, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) was established on the hill east of the town center to train engineering for the city's burgeoning industry. This historical relationship between the city and the university later became important again with the preservation of the historical center.
The city's growth continued due to improvements in transport links. Troy businessmen had built a toll road to Schenectady - the route now follows US Highway 2 and New York State Route 7 west of Colonie . These trade routes were supplemented by the Erie Canal and the Champlain Canal , opening up new markets in the north and west. With the founding of the Troy Steamboat Company, something similar happens for the south. The development of iron ore mines in the Adirondack Mountains led some local industrialists to start producing iron. The construction of the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad in 1835 made the necessary technology available in the city, and the completion of the Schenectady and Troy Railroad in 1842 connected Troy to the railroad network that already stretched west to Buffalo .
The prerequisites for industrialization in Troy were thus met. The invention of the detachable collar by Hannah Lord Montague in 1827 brought the city the product that has given it the nickname "Collar City" to this day. Factories quickly sprang up producing collars, cuffs and other textile products. Most of these establishments were located north of the city center.
With the new capital and the new neighborhoods, new architectural trends came to the city. St. Paul's Episcopal Church , built in 1827, is an early neo-Gothic church based on the design for Ithiel Town's Trinity Church in New Haven . Eight years later, Town in Troy built a structure itself: the Cannon Building was built in collaboration with Alexander Jackson Davis .
Neoclassical buildings first appeared along Second Street in Troy in the late 1820s. In 1839 six local businessmen bought a plot of land on the southern edge of the then development between Second and Third Street and had Washington Park laid out. Contemporary squares - for example in the London borough of Bloomsbury - served as a model for Washington Place. Despite later changes and building sins, the square remained intact. Years later, Philip Johnson called the place "one of the finest places in North America" .
In 1843, another group of neoclassical townhouses was built at 160-168 Second Street. Unusual for urban development, they had one-and-a-half- story porticoes on their fronts, which were supported by Ionic columns and originally had side courtyards. A few years later another building in a similar style was built at number 170. The group of houses was copied elsewhere in the city.
The city's industry peaked in the 1850s, and the wealth it created spurred new architectural trends to spread throughout the city. The Italian style left its mark on commercial buildings around Monument Square and on Bankers' Row , as First Street between State and River Street is called. St. Paul's Place was built in 1850 on the south side of State Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets. The Gilbert Mansion on Second Street west of Washington Park is the most significant single building in this style from the period.
Russell Sage built a number of neo-Gothic houses on Second Street in 1846 , which have survived to this day, but have lost some of the original ornamentation . The following year, St. John's Episcopal Church at the intersection of First and Liberty Streets was raised in the same style, showing what that architectural style looks like in churches.
During the Civil War , Troy played a key role in supporting the Northern States . Burden Ironworks is believed to have supplied all of the Union Army's horseshoes and another local iron producer supplied the armor for the USS Monitor . The owners of that factory later became the first to start producing steel using the Bessemer process in the United States after the war .
In 1862 there was another city fire in Troy, the worst in its history. The flying sparks of a locomotive ignited the wooden drawbridge to Green Island and when the fire could not be contained, it spread to the east. In an area stretching over sixteen blocks, 507 buildings were destroyed by flames. As before, the city was rebuilt quickly this time around, with the area on Fifth Street between Broadway and Grant Streets best reflecting this period of rapid rebuilding. The Gurley Building was rebuilt in just eight months. The adjacent neighborhoods were popular and many of the city's businessmen moved to newly built houses on Fifth Street.
After the war years gave way to the Gilded Age , Troy's prosperity continued. The wealth created by industry in the city gave rise to some of the most important Victorian buildings. Frederick Clarke Withers designed the Rice Building on First Street in 1871, a five-story iron-shaped building that is representative of the Victorian phase of neo-Gothic architecture. The Cannon Building received a contemporary mansard roof after two fires . Marcus Cummings' design for the Congregation Berith Sholom Temple on Third Street, implemented in 1870, is the oldest synagogue of Reform Judaism in New York State and one of the most important church buildings in the district of its time. George B. Post won a competition in 1875 to build a new seat for the Troy Savings Bank with a concert hall on the upper floor . Although the repertoire of forms of his building moved within the framework of the neo-renaissance , the forms and decorative elements anticipated his later work within the Beaux Arts architecture.
New architectural styles from the end of the 19th century
The panic of 1873 put a damper on this growth and meanwhile the steel industry in Troy began to decline, exacerbated by pressure from competition from newer and more efficient producers in western Pennsylvania and the Midwest and by labor unrest . However, the textile industry remained strong and even continued to grow. The pharmacy, built in 1880 at 137 Second Street, stands out for its cast-iron , heavily decorated shop front with arched windows that shows the influence of the Queen Anne style . The house of the industrialist Jonas Heartt, built a little further down the street in the same year, is one of the most beautiful applications of this style to a house in the city.
Marcus Cummings discovered elements of the Richardsonian Romanesque in some of his buildings on the Russell Sage College campus . The Paine Mansion at 49 Second Street applied the same style with entrance arcades , loggia and corner tower to a residential building. The brick-built drugstore extension at 155-157 River Street is a particularly representative example of this architectural style.
In 1891, public art emerged when a statue of Columbia was erected on top of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial in the triangle formed by the intersection of Broadway, River Street, and Second Streets. Two years later, during the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the architectural styles of Neoclassicism, Neo-Renaissance and Beaux-Arts became popular. These architectural styles quickly caught on in Troy when, a year later, Marcus Cummings and his son Frederick built the Courthouse des Countys at 80 Second Street, the third building on this site. A little further on, the Hart Memorial Library was built from Vermont marble in 1897 and joined the Frear Mansion on Second Street, which was built in a similar style two years earlier.
As the 20th century approached, the building owners and architects concentrated on the northern half of today's historic district. At that time, the McCarthy Building on Monument Square and the similarly built National State Bank and the Ilium Building on Broadway were built. All of these structures were built in 1904 and show the decorative influence of the Beaux Arts style. Other architects chose simpler architectural styles of the time as a contrast, for example from the Arts and Crafts . The marble and brick YMCA building on Second Street, built in 1905, and the six-story Caldwell Apartments at the intersection of State Street and Second Street, are two prime examples within the preserve of the style. The latter building was built in 1907. It was the first large residential building in the city.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Mark Peckham: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Central Troy Historic District . New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . July 1986. 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 November 8, 2008.
- ^ Diana Waite: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Grand Street Historic District . New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . March 1972. Archived from the original on April 20, 2012. 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 November 8, 2008.
- ^ Doris Vanderlipp-Manley: National Register of Historic Places nomination, River Street Historic District . New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . Archived from the original on April 20, 2012. 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. Retrieved November 8, 2008.
- ↑ “Troy is a well built town, consisting chiefly of one street of handsome red brick houses ... There are two or three short streets which branch off from the main one, but it is in the latter that all of the principal stores, warehouses and shops are situated. It also contains several excellent inns and taverns. The houses are all new and lofty and built with much taste and simplicity, though convenience and accommodation seem to have guided the architect more than ornament. The deep red bricks, well pointed, give the buildings an air of neatness and cleanliness seldom met in old towns. "
- ↑ Cornelia Brooke: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Hart-Cluett Mansion ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . September 1971. 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 November 8, 2008.
- ^ A b Diana Waite: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Washington Park Historic District ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . April 1973. Archived from the original on April 20, 2012. 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. Retrieved November 8, 2008.
Coordinates: 42 ° 43 ′ 39 " N , 73 ° 41 ′ 27" W.