Clinton Avenue Historic District

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
North side of building 52-60 Clinton Avenue, 2008

The Clinton Avenue Historic District is a conservation area in Albany , New York in the United States. The Historic District covers an area of ​​28  acres on this street, which is part of US Highway 9 between North Pearl Street ( New York State Route 32 ) and Quail Street . This also includes a few blocks on neighboring streets such as Lark Street and Lexington Street.

The settlement of this district began with the construction of Clinton Square at its eastern end, shortly after the opening of the Erie Canal . The writer Herman Melville spent a year of his life in one of the row houses on this square. The development of terraced houses became the standard in urban development further west during industrialization . Today, 92% of the nearly 600 buildings in the historic district are terraced houses in various architectural styles , but mostly houses with an Italian-style appearance, many of which were built as middle-class apartments for speculative purposes. It is the largest concentration of such houses in Albany. With the exception of 20 buildings, all buildings within the district are contributing properties .

Many have remained intact inside and out. The area was listed as a Historic District by the city in 1981 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1988. Urban decay is still affecting the district, and the city has used federal grants to carry out revitalization and stabilization efforts.

geography

The majority of the district extends along the approximately 2.5 km long section of Clinton Avenue between Broadway and North Quail Street. In this area, the road climbs from the flat bank area next to the Hudson River to the western districts, initially steeply on the cliff known as Sheridan Hollow and then a little more gently to the intersection with North Quail Street, a total of 58 meters in altitude. Up to this point the road is fairly wide for Albany standards - at its eastern end, where it picks up Interstate 787 traffic from the nearby Dunn Memorial Bridge , even with separate lanes.

The historic district is thus directly north of Downtown Albany and the government buildings of the state at the Empire State Plaza . Other historic districts, such as Arbor Hill, Broadway-Livingston Avenue and Ten Broeck Triangle, are adjacent to the north.

The borough's boundary largely follows the rear property line of the parcels on either side of Clinton Avenue, but there are inclusions along side streets where similar homes have been built.

At its eastern end, beginning at the Palace Theater, the district includes the western side of North Pearl Street ( New York State Route 32 ) and the eastern side north of the modern Leo O'Brien Federal Office Building. It also includes three row houses along the south side of Livingston Street; the rest of this neighborhood is part of the Arbor Hill-Ten Broeck Triangle Historic District . The area east of the intersection with Livingston Street is included in the Broadway – Livingston Avenue Historic District .

To the south of the intersection of Clinton Avenue and North Pearl Street are the two remaining row houses on Clinton Place. They are the two oldest structures in the district. The properties on either side of the junction with Ten Broeck Street are not included. The district line then runs west along the back of the property on Clinton Avenue to the intersection with the southern portion of Lark Street , where US Highway 9W branches off from Highway 9 south to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey . The district boundary follows Lark Street for several blocks to Elk Street and includes the row of nine buildings on the north side of Elk Street east of Lark Street.

At the next intersection, Henry Johnson Boulevard leads south here, turn US 9 onto Northern Boulevard heading north and leave Clinton Avenue behind you. The district boundary continues along the property lines of Clinton Avenue to Lexington Avenue, from where it includes the houses on the west side of the street to about halfway between First and Second Streets and short rows of houses on either side of First Street west of its intersection with Lexington Avenue. Then the district boundary runs along Clinton Avenue for the rest of its course to Quail Street, with 2 Judson Street only belonging to the district because it is a corner house on a side of Clinton Avenue.

The 70 acres (28 hectares) within the district boundaries are urban in character and almost entirely built-up, with only a few plots vacant. There are a total of 576 buildings in the district, of which only 20 are considered not to contribute to the historical character. Most of these non-contributing structures are modern commercial buildings like supermarkets and gas stations. Of the 556 historical buildings, 530 (around 92%) are two- or three-story row houses made of brick that were built over the course of a century and reflect different architectural styles. The rest of the historical development is made up of the theater, churches, an old police station and two schools.

history

The development of Clinton Avenue from the northern boundary of the City of Albany to the densely built urban residential areas was parallel to the growth of the city during the period that is historically significant for the historic district, thus showing the result of changes in the economic importance of the City between 1820 and 1931. This phase begins with the construction of Clinton Square and ends with the construction of the Palace Theater on the same intersection over a century later.

From colonial times until after independence

When Albany received the charter from the British in 1686 , the later route of Clinton Avenue was established as the northern limit of the city. The land north of it was ruled by the van Rensselaer family. A decade before the American Revolution , Stephen van Rensselaer II had the area directly north of the city measured and a cadastral plan drawn up. After independence, the area became a Town of Colonie in 1795 .

The population in the area increased and the planned roads became a reality. By 1815 around a thousand people were already living between the river and the street that later became Northern Boulevard, so that Albany annexed the area and incorporated it into its urban area as Fifth Ward.

The development of the area increased when the Erie Canal, which flows a short distance north of Albany into the Hudson River , was completed in the early 1820s . In 1828 residents petitioned the Common Council to improve the intersection of Clinton Avenue and North Pearl Street. This zone came increasingly into the focus of visitors to the city because it is located between the canal harbor and downtown. A small park, which was then considered one of the city's great achievements, was created at this intersection. The creation of this park marks the beginning of the development of today's historical district and its history.

Early 19th century

3-5 Clinton Place, now a pub

In the 1830s, many of the run-down houses around the colonial square were demolished and the first row houses were built, their ornamentation reflecting contemporary classical architecture. Of these buildings only two houses remain, 3 and 5 Clinton Place. Herman Melville lived in number 3 in 1843.

The row houses on Clinton Place set the standard for further development in the neighborhood as the century progressed. It was a confluence of building traditions of the early Dutch settlers, with a long and narrow plot of land being almost entirely occupied by the house and the more English-influenced architecture preferred by the Albany residents of the early 19th century as they were too had moved westward much of New England .

North Pearl Street was completed to Livingston Avenue at that time and the first railroad lines reached the city. The tracks on the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad ran into town about a mile north of Clinton Avenue. It was used to transport timber from the vast forests of the Adirondack Mountains and western New York . The construction of the railroad sparked a construction boom along Clinton Avenue in the 1840s. The oldest row houses along the street, the three buildings between numbers 65 and 75, were part of a group of six buildings that local landowner Thomas Ludlow had built for speculative reasons in 1845.

Row of houses 252–270 Clinton Avenue in Italianate style, one house missing

In the 1850s, Clinton Avenue was mainly built between North Pearl and Swan Streets. The houses built at the time reflect early adaptations of the Italianate style with its preference for cornices with corbels . These style elements were usually made of sandstone before the Civil War , after which wood was used. This architectural style dominated the row houses built on Clinton Avenue until about 1880; even today the majority of the buildings in the historic district are in this style. Houses 133-143 Clinton Avenue, dating from 1851, are an example of the Antebellum's Italianate row houses . The still complete row of houses 250–272 Clinton Avenue shows the application of this architectural style from the post-war period.

The population grew enough that School 5, now a church, was built at 226-228 North Pearl Street. The push for development at the western end of Clinton Avenue began later in the 1950s when Erastus Corning combined several of New York's railroad companies to form the New York Central Railroad . In order to meet the needs of the maintenance of the new railway company's rolling stock, he had a depot built north of Clinton Avenue on the west side of Northern Boulevard . This facility had the largest stockyard in the United States east of Chicago . The city itself expanded its horse-drawn tram westward along the former Schenectady Turnpike, now Central Avenue , in the 1960s . This made it possible to develop the street blocks at the western end of today's historic district. Many of the clapboard- clad houses were occupied by German-Americans .

Late 19th century

Row house at 168 Clinton Avenue in Queen Anne style

In 1867 the city built a fire station at 126 Clinton Avenue. This preceded the annexation of land on the western side of Northern Boulevard in 1870, placing all of Clinton Avenue within the city limits. In 1872, the city opened a horse-drawn tram line along Clinton Avenue, which runs from North Pearl Street to Lexington Street, which better connected downtown with the area. The area became more desirable and houses gradually replaced the brick factories that were there before.

The decades of the Gilded Age saw a building boom along Clinton Avenue. Many of the remaining undeveloped parcels, especially in the western part of the street, were bought and row houses were built on for speculative purposes. Most of them were rented out to new workers and craftsmen. The development advanced to Lark Street, the first street west of downtown Albany to cross the later filled in Sheridan Hollow Gorge. After the annexation, Lexington Street was also extended one block to the north and terraced houses made of brick were also built here.

Construction continued into the 1880s and some of the earlier houses were demolished to make way for new construction. The Italianate style slowly withdrew and the builders experimented with the Richardsonian Romanesque and the Queen Anne style . Hope Baptist Church, at the west end of the McPherson Terrace row north of Clinton Avenue west of Judson Street, is the most prominent structure in the Richardson Romanesque within the district. The Queen Anne Style is the basis for the bay windows of the house at 5 Wilson Street (on the corner of North Pearl Street) and for the row of identical houses with arched windows on the first floor at 152½, 154 and 154½ and for the house at 168 Clinton Avenue with its protruding Pavilion with a gable roof . The two architectural styles come together in a row of houses built with stone blocks between Lexington and Robin Street. The neo-Gothic style was used in the construction of the former St. Luke's Methodist Church in 1883 on the northwest corner of the intersection with Lexington Street.

Construction activity slowed down in the 1890s because most of the area was already built on, so that new buildings were mainly limited to filling the remaining vacant lots. Among the most significant of these additions was the completion of the east end of McPherson Terrace.

20th century

Palace Theater

Because today's historic district was largely built up in the 1890s, the architectural trends of the early 20th century had little effect on it. In 1905, an American Foursquare was built on the southwest corner of the intersection of Clinton Avenue and Lexington Avenue , and several more brick and stone townhouses were built on North Pearl Street in the same decade. Most of the buildings built in the early 20th century were for public use, such as the neoclassical police station at 222 Pearl Street built in 1911 . The youngest contributing building in the historic district is the Palace Theater, opened in 1931 at the intersection of Clinton Avenue and North Pearl Street, where its history began and ends the period significant to the historic district.

The area remained a lively residential area through the first half of the 20th century. When, after the Second World War, the suburbanization began and many went out of the city, they were replaced by poorer residents, especially the west could not afford loans or loans to renovate their homes to get to the Northern Boulevard. During the 1960s and 1970s, the area began to show signs of urban decay, with vacancies and neglect of buildings.

At no time was the district a target of major urban renewal planning . After a few demolitions at its eastern end in the late 1970s, the area qualified for Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs). The City of Albany, which bought the Palace Theater in 1969, designated Clinton Avenue and North Pearl Street as a historic district in 1981. A few years later, the city government included 82 row houses between North Pearl Street and Northern Boulevard in a neighborhood stabilization program. These efforts culminated when the historic district was added to the National Register in 1984 .

Clinton Avenue today

Empty houses are a sign of urban decay

New construction or expansion measures within the district must be assessed by the city's Historic Resources Commission (HRC). This is a group of nine citizens of the city who show an interest in the protection of monuments and who are appointed to this office by the mayor. These stabilization efforts have not yet had any effect on the entire historic district. In some street blocks, specifically west of Northern Boulevard, houses are still in a state of decay and some storefronts are unused.

supporting documents

  1. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Austin O'Brien: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Clinton Avenue Historic District ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . May 1988. Archived from the original on December 10, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 3, 2009. A partial version of this document is available at livingplaces.com . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.oprhp.state.ny.us
  2. Historic Resources commission ( English ) City of Albany. 2007. Archived from the original on November 21, 2008. 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 July 21, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.albanyny.org
  3. Scott Waldman: Neighborhoods Face Double Loss (English) . In: Albany Times-Union , Hearst Corporation , March 30, 2009. Retrieved July 5, 2009. “ Some of the grand 19th-century row houses on Clinton Avenue, the main street that runs through both neighborhoods, don't even have front steps anymore. Storefronts long since abandoned have yellowing newspapers inside. “  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / archives.timesunion.com  

Web links

Commons : Clinton Avenue Historic District  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files

Coordinates: 42 ° 39 ′ 41 ″  N , 73 ° 45 ′ 35 ″  W.