Jane's Walk: Site 1

During the month of May, The Gossips of Rivertown will be offering a unique version of Jane Jacobs Walk for all the rugged individualists here in Hudson. Instead of one guided walk offered on a single weekend, Gossips will provide a new post each day in May that calls attention to some feature of Hudson's ever engaging built environment. With these notes in hand, readers can map out their own walks around the city, whenever it suits them, to visit the sites Gossips mentions and perhaps also to make their own discoveries.
 

This brick wall is perhaps the most intriguing architectural relic in Hudson. It stands along the east side of the house at 124 Union Street and, with its four fireboxes and chimney flues, is all that remains of the very early Hudson house shown in this picture. 

The house, which had a gambrel roof characteristic of Dutch vernacular architecture, is generally believed to have predated the arrival of the Proprietors in 1783. In the early 1990s, the house suffered a damaging fire, which completely destroyed the roof structure. In 1992-1993, Bill Ebel and Jeremiah Rusconi undertook to save the house. They had a new post and beam roof frame constructed for the building, but as they cleaned out the house and discovered how bad the damage was to the rest of the structure, they were slowly forced to admit it was a lost cause. 
 

Eventually but reluctantly, Ebel and Rusconi came to the sad conclusion that the house had to be demolished, but not before they thoroughly documented the house with photographs, measurements, and notes. The west wall of the building, however, could not come down, because the house at 124 Union Street depended on it. The house had been built between two existing buildings, using the walls of those buildings as its side walls.