Hudson Historic District (New York)
The Hudson Historic District is a landmarked district in central Hudson , New York in the United States and is one of the richest directories of architectural history in New York State . It has an area of 55.7 hectares and stretches from the eastern bank of the Hudson River to almost the eastern city limits. The core area of the district comprises 45 street blocks. 756 buildings within the district are contributing properties and most of them date from the time between the founding of the city and the mid-1930s. The district was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
Within the district lies part of the original Front Street-Parade Hill-Lower Warren Street Historic District. This was set up in 1970, but some of its buildings were demolished and therefore not included in today's Historic District. The center of Hudson is one of the few cases in which the street bars laid by the founder in the 18th century have been maintained to this day. Warren Street is the main street in the district and was built in the 19th century. It is considered the best preserved main street in New York from this period.
The oldest building in the district reflect the origins of the Hudson River in the period immediately after the American Revolutionary War resist when whalers from New England were looking for a safe haven for their ships. Whale signs on street signs in Hudson are a reminder of this past. The city later became an industrial center, with workers 'living quarters and sumptuous factory owners' residences. At the beginning of the 20th century, the officially tolerated prostitution in what is now Columbia Street made the city known as the small town with the large red light district .
Efforts to preserve historic monuments since the historic district was founded have contributed to the economic revitalization of the city. Shortly after the district was established, antique dealers opened their stores on Warren Street, and the New York Times named the street the best antiques shop in the northeastern United States. Art galleries later followed suit and a number of the weekend-goers have moved to Hudson, including some celebrities. The arrival of these new residents led to the renovation of the old houses they had acquired. The city has now set up a commission whose task is to protect the historic character of the district.
geography
The historic district is irregularly cut, but roughly follows the street grid of the city oriented from northwest to southeast, with its core being formed by the nine by five street blocks on the main street of the city, Warren Street. At the west end, the areas on the west side of Front Street and the waterfront of the city are enclosed and connected to the core area of the district by a block on Warren Street. A total of 748 contributing buildings, five structures and three objects belong to the historic district.
On South Third Street ( NY 9G / 23B ), a modern building on the southeast corner of the intersection does not belong to the district, but all lots east of it up to the route of a previous railroad line. A bulge to the north includes properties on North Fourth Street to State Street. In the east, the district boundary follows the railroad tracks to North Seventh Street and then extends eastward on Warren Street (here part of US 9 ).
The historic district extends north again from Warren Street, including buildings on North Sixth and North Seventh Street to State Street and parts of Columbia Street. Another section extends up from Warren and Columbia Streets to Eighth Street and ends below the hospital with the nearby Rossman-Prospect Avenue Historic District ; Workers from an ironworks in the north of the city lived in this area. The historic district also includes parts of Union Street and its east boundary meets the southern boundary on the former railroad tracks across from South Seventh Street.
The plots in this historic district are densely built, with mixed use predominating. Storefronts on the first floor dominate the core areas along Allen, Union and Warren Streets. A few smaller larger houses are located in the central area of the district on these streets, the quieter side streets are mostly built with smaller houses. Public buildings such as the Courthouse of Columbia Counties and the US Post Office Hudson are concentrated around the intersection of Warren and South Fourth Streets. Several churches and industrial buildings are scattered across the area of the historic district, as are three major open spaces : Promenade Park to the west, Courthouse Square, and the plaza that is surrounded to the east of the district by Columbia, North Seventh and Warren Streets and Park Place.
history
Hudson was one of the first planned cities in North America. Even today, the plan of the city's founders, who died a long time ago, controls their current growth.
18th century
During colonial times and the American Revolutionary War, Hudson was a small, underdeveloped waterfront settlement known as Claverack Landing. This began to change when, in 1783, a group of New England whalers, many of whom were Quakers , came further west looking for ways to house their ships in a way that the British were no longer as easy to find and to destroy. Claverack Landing was then located between two small bays near the point to which seaworthy ships could sail the Hudson River and therefore seemed ideal for this purpose. These people bought the land from one of the Dutch settlers in the area and divided it into parcels of equal size. To do this, they agreed to settle it themselves or to sell it at a cost that covers it.
1785 inhabitants were plenty of Nantucket and Rhode Iceland drawn to Hudson as the first City of New York since the Declaration of Independence incorporate to as the third city in the state at all. These early inhabitants reserved the plateau, which today towers over the water at the western end of the historic district as Promenade Hill, as a freely accessible area for the enjoyment of the citizens. Some of these newcomers dismantled their New England homes and rebuilt them on the 50 by 120 foot parcels of land in Hudson .
Those who built new homes used the anonymous building tradition of the New England port cities they came from. Most of them were timber frame houses with a central chimney, such as 116 Union Street. They generally avoided the Dutch building tradition of the Hudson Valley . The Gambrel roof at 126 Union Street, for example, is inspired not by the roofs on the houses of Dutch settlers, but by the older ones in New England.
They established the grid according to which the streets were laid out, although many of these streets were far from being built on or even constructed at all. Twenty feet (around 7 m) wide footpaths were laid between the longer streets, creating the avenues that still exist today. Warren Street was to become the main street of the city and Fourth Street was intended as the north-south axis.
In 1800 the city had 4,000 inhabitants and the area was laid out as far as Sixth Street. Hudson stayed within that grid for most of the 19th century. Within this grid a pattern emerged that still exists today: the areas north of Warren Street are mainly residential areas for the lower income population, while the street blocks south of it are inhabited by the higher income population.
19th century
In the early years of the new century, the descendants of the city's founders built their houses in the newly emerged Federal Style . The older of these are the many two-story brick houses on Front Street and the western sections of Union and Warren Streets. Many of these employed the structural design of New England homes, which distinguishes Hudson's federal style homes from those in the surrounding communities. Later buildings feature more elaborate architecture, such as the Robert Jenkins House at 113 Warren Street, with marble details, elliptical skylights, and more subdued proportions.
After the War of 1812 and the British naval blockade, the US whaling industry staggered for a while but recovered in the 1830s. This economic boom manifested itself architecturally in Hudson through classicism . Many houses were built in this style, including a group of houses on Columbia Street east of Park Place. Examples include the ornate Curtis House at 32 Warren Street and the Temple Houses at 51 Partition Street and 738 Warren Street. Around 1850, the Picturesque style , the mix of architecture in the city , came into vogue and blended it better with the rest of the region where late neo-Gothic styles , such as the Carpenter Gothic style preferred by Andrew Jackson Downing , first gained popularity.
This construction boom subsided when petroleum began to supplant whale oil in the 1840s. The construction of the Hudson River Railroad later that decade cut the city off from its port, ending its days as a whaling center, but like the river traffic connected to the Erie Canal , gave the city a new lease of life as an industrial center. As in many other cities in the northeastern United States, a textile industry emerged . Brick factories also prospered and the Allen Paper Car Wheel Works, which produced wheel sets for railroad cars, was mentally linked to Hudson. The Cornelius H. Evans House , 414-416 Warren Street, symbolizes this period of urban development. The large brick house in the style of the Second Empire was the home of a successful brewer and bottler and his family.
20th century
Though the industries that made the city prosperous at the beginning of the 19th century lost their importance at the end of the century, Hudson's economy remained stable. Warren & Wetmore designed the new Courthouse des Countys, built in 1900. Its neoclassical elements were taken up again a decade later on the facade of the new post office . At this point in time, the street grid was almost completely built on and in the western areas, near the bank, it was heavily used industrially, which made this part of the city less attractive to live in. There are several other scattered examples of early 20th century architecture within the historic district, such as 521 Union Street, the former building of the YMCA .
Most of the new buildings were built on Warren Street in the early 20th century, where four churches and a school were built. At this time a new pillar of the local economy was forming: prostitution . Old houses on Diamond Street have been converted into brothels . At the height of this development, 15 brothels were in operation, making the city known for its red light district in the country and even overseas. Gangsters like Legs Diamond were a regular visitor and influence, and the money they distributed contributed to corrupting the local police force and administration, allowing the brothels to flourish. This ended in 1950 when state police raided Diamond Street (now Columbia Street) and arrested many of the brothel owners. Many of them never returned to the city and the brothels were closed forever.
The decline of prostitution was not followed by the rise of a new branch of industry and so the city suffered a downward trend towards the end of the 20th century. Even the establishment of the western part of today's historic district in 1970 as Front Street-Parade Hill-Lower Warren Street Historic District in the still quite new National Register of Historic Places could not prevent the demolition of some older buildings on Front Street and than in 1985 the current district was created, these areas were excluded. A total of 48 buildings from the former district remain and are contributing parts of the Hudson Historic District.
Significant contributing properties
Two of the buildings within the historic district are self-registered on the National Register, one prior to its creation and one added later. There are also a few other noteworthy contributing properties:
- The Cornelius H. Evans House was built in 1861 in the Second Empire style at 414-416 Warren Street. The brick house of a local brewery owner is one of the most famous buildings in the city. It was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 as the first building in Hudson.
- The brick US Post Office at 402 Union Street, built in 1911, is one of twelve post offices in New York State designed by James Knox Taylor, chief architect of the US Treasury Department , at the beginning of the 20th century. It was Taylor who began to combine classic embellishments with the post office favorite style of the Colonial Revival . In Hudson, he used two Roman-inspired porticas that resembled those of the courthouse on the opposite side of the square. The post office was the subject of a multiple property submission in 1988 with a number of other post offices in New York .
- The Columbia County Courthouse was built in 1900 in a neoclassical style . The building designed by Warren & Wetmore stands on the south side of Courthouse Square.
- The Commercial building at 260 Warren Street is a rare classical building with pillars and stone windowsills.
- The House at 116 Union Street is one of the finest examples of New England's anonymous architecture from the early days of the city; it was created around 1785.
- The Old City Hall at 327 Warren Street is a late (1854) brick Classicist building and was Hudson's main public building for many years.
- The Robert Jenkins House at 113 Warren Street is a federal style building and was owned by one of the city's first mayors. It is one of the most mature examples of the style in Hudson.
Monument protection
In 2003, the city created a monument protection commission, whose task it is to review building applications for new buildings and changes to the outer facades of existing buildings in the historic district. The commission will consist of seven members appointed by the mayor, at least one of whom must be an architect, one historian and one resident of the district. All members of the commission must have an interest in monument protection. The commission meets at least once a month. In addition to the evaluation of building applications, the classification of buildings as cultural monuments is one of the tasks of the commission.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g City of Hudson: Historic Preservation ( English ) City of Hudson. February 2007. Archived from the original on June 11, 2009. 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 15, 2009.
- ^ A b Harold Faber: Hudson Casts New Light on Its Red-Light Past (English) , The New York Times . October 21, 1994. Retrieved July 15, 2009.
- ↑ Kathryn Matthews: HAVENS; Weekender (English) , The New York Times . November 11, 2001. Retrieved July 15, 2009.
- ↑ CJ Hughes: Hudson, NY; Architectural Gems in at antique setting (English) , The New York Times . November 3, 2006. Retrieved July 15, 2009.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Shirley Dunn: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Hudson Historic District ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . August 1985. Archived from the original on June 4, 2012. 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 15, 2009.
- ↑ a b c Patricia Fenoff: City Of Hudson: History ( English ) City of Hudson. 2009. Archived from the original on July 30, 2009. 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 15, 2009.
- ^ Larry Gobrecht: National Register of Historic Places nomination, US Post Office - Hudson . New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . November 1986. Archived from the original on June 4, 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 June 25, 2009.
Coordinates: 42 ° 15 ′ 4 " N , 73 ° 47 ′ 19" W.