The Transformation Continues

In August, Gossips did a post about 886 Columbia Street and Delbert Dinehart, the man for whom the lavish house was built: "The Transformation of a Mansion."

The photo of 886 Columbia Street that accompanied the notice in the newspaper of its auction in 1950

Today, a reader reported that workers were on the roof, replacing the original clay tiles with black asphalt shingles.

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Hudson as a Cautionary Tale

Today, New York Magazine's "Daily Intelligencer" has an article with the title "Not the Next Hudson: Newburgh, Catskill, and Troy, once downtrodden, are hoping recent revitalization doesn't get out of hand." Before analyzing the state of the comeback in each of the three places named, the author, Simone Kitchens (shown in the photo above), has this to say about our city: 

It’d be too easy to declare any of these places a potential “next Hudson”—the onetime working-class town where antique lamps now go for $7,000. Hudson’s about-face, which resulted in longtime residents being priced out, has become a kind of cautionary tale for these developing small towns, which, after struggling through decades of decline, are showing glimmers of a turnaround and are intent on growing in a different way.

Humph.
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Getting Ready for November

This morning, the Ulster County Regional Chamber of Commerce held a "Meet the Congressional Candidates" event in Kingston, featuring Diane Neal (independent), Antonio Delgado (Democrat), John Faso (Republican), and Steven Greenfield (Green Party). You can watch a video of that event by clicking here.

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HDC Responds

On Monday, Gossips announced that a petition had been initiated, asking the board of the Hudson Development Corporation (HDC) to hold its monthly meeting in the early evening instead of at noon. Today, there's an article about that petition and HDC's response to it on HudsonValley360: "HDC chair defends board meeting times, transparency." In the article, John Gilstrap, who was elected chair of the HDC board in March 2018, after nominating himself, is quoted as saying, "I don't see a compelling reason to move the [meeting] time." Noting that "the board has given the public the opportunity to hear from prospective developers, allowed them to hear discussions about the developers, and distributed copies of the proposed one-page plans," Gilstrap added, "I don't know how much more transparent we could be other [than] to have them come into my living room."

When Gossips last checked, the petition requesting HDC to change its meeting time had ninety-three signatures. The next HDC meeting is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, September 25, at noon, at 1 North Front Street.  
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Food Today--Uptown and Downtown

Rolling Grocer 19 makes its debut appearance this week! Right now it is in the parking lot at Bliss Towers and will be there until 7 p.m.

Forty-five minutes ago, the Upstreet Market opened in the Public Square, as it does every Wednesday through the summer and into the fall. The vendors will be in the park with their fresh produce and other wares until 7 p.m.

  
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There Oughta Be a Law

Many times when considering the vast number of properties in Hudson acquired and warehoused--some for more than a decade--by a single entity, the opinion has been expressed, "There oughta be a law. . . ." Now there is, or there almost is. At last night's Common Council meeting, the aldermen voted unanimously to enact a vacant buildings law.

The rationale for the law states:

It is the finding of the Common Council that buildings which remain vacant, with access points board over, are unsightly, unsafe and have a negative effect on their surroundings. This is particularly troublesome in residential and neighborhood commercial neighborhoods. Unfortunately, many buildings, once boarded, remain that way for many years. The purpose of this article is to establish a program for identifying and registering vacant buildings; to determine the responsibilities of owners of vacant buildings and structures; and to speed the rehabilitation of the vacant properties.

The law imposes a fee for owning a building that is kept vacant: $1,000 for the first year; $2,000 for the second year; $3,000 for the third year; $4,000 for the fourth year; and $5,000 for the fifth and each subsequent year.

When the Council voted to enact the law last night, I thought immediately of the Robert Taylor House, considered to be the oldest surviving house in Hudson. It came to mind because I had visited it only days before, while taking some folks on a walk around the Kaz redevelopment site, and heard one of my companions on the walk opine that the house was approaching the point at which it would be beyond saving.

The house has been vacant since 2003 or 2004, when there was a fire in the building. One of the Galloway-Van Ameringen entities acquired it in 2011. In 2012, there was a plan, mercifully abandoned, to move the house to a lot on lower Union Street. Last year, during the DRI (Downtown Revitalization Initiative) planning process, there was a proposal to convert the house into a tavern, but objections to allowing any Galvan property to receive DRI funding jettisoned that plan.

One wonders what the impact the vacant buildings law will have on the fate of this building--one of the oldest in Hudson and one closely associated with Hudson's early maritime history and with its earliest water-dependent industries.

Also of interest at last night's Common Council meeting, resolutions were passed authorizing a feasibility study on the adaptive reuse of John L. Edwards School, a feasibility study to make the current City Hall ADA compliant, and salary increases for the city treasurer, city clerk, and code enforcement officer, the latter resolution passing not without dissent. Dan Udell's video of the meeting is now on YouTube, and you can watch it all here.    
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Deadline Fast Approaching

This Friday, September 21, is the final day to submit photographs for the Calvert Vaux Preservation Alliance's inaugural photo exhibit.

The call for entries reads in part: "Amateur and professional photographers may submit their favorite shots of subjects generally falling within the bounds of historic architecture--as defined by the artist, and within the wider Hudson Valley region."

Photographs must be submitted before 5:00 p.m. on Friday, September 21. Instructions for submission are at calvertvaux.org. Accepted entries for the exhibition will be announced on October 15. The exhibition at the Morton Library in Rhinecliff runs from November 9 to December 7.
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County Looking to Sell Three Lots in Hudson

Back in July, Gossips did a post about three lots on Strawberry Alley that somehow didn't get transferred to the City of Hudson in a land swap back in 2003 or 2004: "More Land for Sale." That post ended with this thought:

Given the current interest in promoting infill housing and developing new housing on vacant or underused sites within residential areas, these three lots might be the perfect place to create a little row of houses whose design would mimic that of a mews. How charming would it be to have an address on Strawberry Alley? The people in the neighborhood might not be very enthusiastic about it though, since they seem to have claimed these lots as a parking and vehicle storage area.

Photo: Linda Mussmann

Photo: Linda Mussmann

The Register-Star is now reporting that the Board of Supervisors has agreed to sell the land at auction: "Columbia County to sell 3 parcels on Strawberry Alley for minimum of $3,000 each." The article quotes Matt Murell as saying, "You can't really build on those parcels because there is no water or sewer going to those lots, as far as I know. The neighbors who complained [about people throwing garbage and parking cars there] may be interested in purchasing the properties, though."

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"Sheep May Safely Graze"

Not long ago, I was in the cemetery one evening with Peter Jung. I was there searching for the culvert where I had been told a fox family resided; Jung was there raking up thatch and trimming around the headstones in the Gifford family plot.

Jung has been the self-appointed steward of the burial site of Sanford Gifford and members of his family since 2008, when he first came upon the grave of the Hudson River School painter, raising funds and orchestrating the restoration of the headstones in 2010.

Since the restoration was completed, Jung has taken it upon himself to keep the Gifford family plot and adjacent areas maintained and tidy, mowing, raking, and trimming the grass around and between the stones.

The Gifford family grave site is in the Hudson City Cemetery, the older part of the cemetery, separated from Cedar Park, the newer part of the cemetery, by Ten Broeck Lane. The earliest grave in the Hudson City Cemetery is that of Phebe Folger, wife of Benjamin Folger, who died in 1784. Cedar Park was developed more than a century later, in 1896. The majority of the graves in the Hudson City Cemetery are from the 19th century. In 1983, this part of the cemetery was determined to be eligible for listing in the State and National Registers of Historic Places for its "noteworthy collection of funerary art, ranging from typically late 18th-century stones executed by a master carver--and embellished with winged effigies and other typical design vocabulary--to tombs, such as the Egyptian Revival-style tomb which is an outstanding reflection of American romanticism in the antebellum period and the interest in that period of utilizing Egyptian design motifs in cemetery design."

In his History of Columbia County, Franklin Ellis said of the Hudson cemetery:

Along the northeastern declivity of Prospect hill, and extending down to the old Columbia turnpike, lies the ground of the Hudson cemetery; a spot combining all the requisites that enlightened modern taste demands in a place of graves,--rural quiet, great natural beauty, and a conformation of surface peculiarly adapted to receive those artificial embellishments which sore-hearted mourners love to lavish around the resting-places of their dead.

The declivity of which Ellis, writing in 1878, spoke admiringly, presents a problem for modern-day cemetery maintenance. Rob Perry, superintendent of the Department of Public Works, which maintains the cemetery, has often noted that steep slope of the old cemetery and the seemingly random placement of the headstones and monuments makes maintaining that part of the cemetery a great challenge. When Jung and I were at the cemetery a while back, he made a suggestion: let sheep take charge of trimming the grass. It seems this is not a completely original idea.

Photo: Gregory A. Shemitz|National Catholic Reporter

For several years, a trio of sheep have been grazing on the grass and weeds growing around and in between the headstones and monuments in the cemetery at the Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in Lower Manhattan. Two years ago, the City of Ithaca began using sheep to maintain its historic cemetery. A report that appeared on NYUp.com explained: 

The animals move slowly and can pick around fallen stones that would be chewed up by mowers. That's an advantage in a historic cemetery. The sheep can also maneuver on the cemetery's steep slopes more easily than a human mowing staff.

Sheep and goats--nearly three dozen of them--are used to cut the grass in the historic Vale Cemetery in Schenectady. Why couldn't sheep be employed in Hudson's historic cemetery as well? Sheep would save the City money in cemetery maintenance and free up staff for other public works tasks. 

This suggestion comes with the caveat that sheep should only be allowed to graze in the older part of the cemetery, the part of the cemetery that's been determined to be National Register eligible, where the graves, with only a very few exceptions, are more than a century and sometimes two centuries old and are more likely to be visited by historians and enthusiasts of American funerary art than by relatives of the departed, and not in Cedar Park where they might devour plantings and damage objects placed on the graves of the more recently departed by family members.
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Meeting Canceled

Gossips has received word that the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting scheduled for Wednesday, September 19, at 6:00 p.m., has been canceled for want of a quorum. The public hearing about the proposal for 17-19 Union Street, which began at the August meeting of the ZBA, will be resumed at next month's meeting, which is scheduled to take place on October 17.
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"A Zoning Solution Within Our Grasp"

On Wednesday, the Register-Star published a "My View" by Jonathan Lerner and Walter Chatham called "A Zoning Solution Within Our Grasp," which proposed that form-based zoning might be a solution to Hudson's zoning issues. The next afternoon, Lerner was featured on WGXC's Thursday Afternoon Show, in conversation with hosts Tom DePietro and Ellen Thurston. The program has now been archived and can be heard here. The conversation begins at 1:05:50.
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Meetings of Interest in the Week Ahead

This week's meetings are concentrated in the the middle three days--Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

• On Tuesday, September 18, the Common Council Finance Committee meets at 5:30 p.m., and the regular monthly meeting of the Common Council begins at 7:00 p.m. Both meetings are scheduled to take place in the Community Room of the Hudson Area Library, 51 North Fifth Street. At its meeting, the Common Council is expected to vote on several resolutions, all of which can be reviewed here. Of interest among them is a resolution authorizing the mayor to issue a request for proposal (RFP) for a feasibility study for making City Hall ADA compliant. The fact the City Hall is not now ADA compliant is the reason the Council is now meeting in places other than its official chambers. It is also possible that the Council may be voting on proposed Local Law No. 5 , known to some as the "Stewart's law." Last Thursday, when Gossips was otherwise occupied, I'm told the Planning Board agreed to respond to the Council's request for a recommendation on the proposed Local Law No. 5 by sticking with their original opinion that "tackling zoning issues piecemeal is not the way to go" and recommending that the comprehensive plan be revised and comprehensive zoning revisions be undertaken.
• On Wednesday, September 19, the Common Council Public Works and Parks Committee meets at 5:15 p.m. The meeting will take place not at City Hall but at the Central Fire Station, 77 North Seventh Street. At 6:00 p.m., the monthly Zoning Board of Appeals meeting takes place at City Hall. At the last meeting of the ZBA, a public hearing was opened on the application for four area variances required for a proposed new addition to 17-19 Union Street and new construction on Partition Street behind the house. For the public hearing, the owner of the property, Steve Dunn, who is a member of the ZBA, retained Jason O'Toole to present the project. In lieu of public comment, the ZBA received a letter from the owner of the adjacent property at 15½ Union Street declaring that the proposed project would have a negative impact on her property and questioning how it would fit into the historic context of Partition Street. The letter raised questions that could not be answered by O'Toole, and since Dunn himself was not present to provide the information, the public hearing was kept open to be continued at this month's ZBA meeting.

• On Thursday, September 20, the Common Council Economic Development Committee meets at 6:00 p.m. at City Hall. No agenda is available for the meeting, but Economic Development Committee meetings are always of interest.

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Petitioning for Change

Even before Common Council president Tom DePietro called it a "quasi-agency that is outdated and should probably no longer exist" and asked city attorney Andy Howard to look into how it could be dissolved, Hudson Development Corporation (HDC) was under attack for its perceived lack of transparency, particularly in its planning for the redevelopment of the Kaz warehouse site at the confluence of Cross Street and Tanners Lane. The two things about HDC that annoy people most are its tendency to go into executive session without appropriate justification and its practice of meeting at noon on a workday.

The noon meeting of HDC is a tradition. Once a month, board members spend their lunch hour at a meeting, where lunch (usually pizza) is provided, enabling them to serve on the board without giving up afterwork time, which--perhaps in the past more than now--is often family time. HDC's critics, however, see the noon meeting as a deliberate attempt to discourage public attendance and curtail community involvement. There have been requests for the HDC board to hold its meetings in the early evening instead of at noon. Now the requests have become a petition, calling on the HDC board to change its meeting time. The language of the petition reads in part:

Hudson, NY, is changing. Fewer decisions for the community's future are being made behind closed doors. But the Hudson Development Corporation, which can make crucial decisions about the city, has an unelected board for which there is no oversight and little transparency. It is an undemocratic entity.

It continues to hold its monthly meeting on the fourth Tuesday at noon, despite the community's repeated requests to change the meetings to the early evening, when more citizens can participate. . . .

The HDC is not beholden to shareholders. The HDC is beholden to the community. The community asks the HDC to change the meeting time.

To read the entire petition and to sign it, click here.
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Properties Identified with Historic Personages

In Hudson's preservation ordinance, Chapter 169 of the city code, one of the criteria for a building to be designated as an individual landmark or as part of a historic district is being identified with a historic personage. Sadly, despite the fact that there is historian member of the Historic Preservation Commission, the association of buildings with historic personages is rarely considered when the HPC deliberates on applications for certificates of appropriateness. That may be because all buildings within a historic district have equal standing in the eyes of the HPC, or possibly because the HPC is often unaware of a building's history of ownership. A case in point is 356 Union Street.

When the building was acquired by Galvan Partners LLC in July 2004, it had been carved up into a rabbit warren of apartments. (Since then, ownership of the building has been transferred to Galvan Initiatives Foundation in December 2012 and then to Galvan Civic Housing LLC in March of this year.) According to the tax rolls, the house has been classified as an apartment building since 1999 and probably for many years before that. It's now being rehabbed by Galvan as an apartment building, and although the plans for the exterior renovations were never granted a certificate of appropriateness by the HPC, the slate on the mansard roof has been replaced--without replicating the rosette pattern of the original.

One wonders if the house would have gotten more careful consideration if it were generally known that this was originally the home of Dr. H. Lyle Smith, certainly one of Hudson's more celebrated historic personages.

Dr. H. Lyle Smith, who was born in New York City in 1843, settled in Hudson and began his medical practice here in 1867. For much of his career, he was the Health Officer for the City of Hudson. Smith's name often appeared in the newspaper, in connection with remarkable medical feats and gruesome accidents. For example, in 1868, when an ovarian tumor was removed from a woman, so large that it merited mention in the Hudson Evening Register, it was Smith who did the surgery and made the extracted growth available for viewing at his office. When the widow Killcollins tumbled down the cliff at Promenade Hill, Smith was summoned and attended to her fractured skull. Great detail of the procedure, during which "notwithstanding the severity of her injuries the poor woman retained her consciousness," was reported in the Register, as well as the doctor's opinion that there was little hope for her recovery. In 1873, Smith performed what the newspaper called "a curious and interesting surgical operation . . . known as 'Skin Grafting,'" taking skin from a father to cover the stump of his child's amputated leg, because "the skin which was hoped would grow and cover the end of the stump, mortified, leaving the bone and muscles bare and uncovered." In 1875, when an employee at Wardle's drugstore foolishly sampled belladonna, Smith was summoned. In 1890, when the body of a still-born baby was found in a starch box in the cemetery, Smith was the first to be called by the cemetery worker who made the discovery. When a young woman was run down in the street by a "scorcher" in 1898, Smith tended her wounds and assured her family "he did not anticipate any lasting injurious results from the accident."

What was Smith's most celebrated contribution to Hudson, however, had little to do with his medical practice. In 1896, Smith and his wife spent the summer touring Europe. In the fall of that year, his memoir of the journey, called Mary and I Go to Europe and written under the pseudonym "A. Piller, Doctor," was published by the Hendrick Hudson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Smith donated all proceeds from the sale of the book to Hudson's chapter of the DAR. In its review of the book, the Register had this to say:

The chronicle of the little journey in the world is told in happy ingenuous fashion, bits of anecdote and humorous incidents lightening the Baedeker details that must belong to every well-regulated trip to Europe, and all in all there are few literary folk who go forth "the sights for to see" who have observed as picturesquely and written as entertainingly as the doctor on his travels.

Mary and I Go to Europe was a great success. Not only did it raise money for the local chapter of the DAR but it also attracted the attention of Frances Chester White Hartley, the granddaughter of Robert Jenkins and great-granddaughter of Seth Jenkins. Frances Hartley had been born at 113 Warren Street, the house built by her grandfather in 1811. After reading Mary and I Go to Europe, she visited the city of her birth, the city founded by her great grandfather and his brother, and was persuaded by Smith to give her ancestral home to the Hendrick Hudson Chapter of the DAR, to be used as a museum and library. When the house was formally dedicated as the DAR Chapter House, the Hudson Republican reported:

To Dr. Smith much praise must be accorded for the doing of a grand work in the securing of this gift. It was his book of travel, the proceeds of which were given to the Hendrick Hudson Chapter, that drew Mrs. Hartley's attention to the Chapter's work and it was Dr. Smith's earnest plea which convinced her of the real need of this city. To no Hudsonian should more praise by given than to H. Lyle Smith, M.D.

There's a memorial to Smith in the DAR Chapter House, consisting of "a fine picture of Dr. H. Lyle Smith, the gift of Mrs. Smith" which hangs over "a handsome antique mahogany cabinet . . . a repository for the relics which he so highly prized." The memorial is "a testimony of the love and esteem which the Chapter had always felt for this dear friend, who had the Chapter interests so deeply at heart." It may also still be possible to buy a copy of Mary and I Go to Europe there.

Smith died in 1904 at the age of sixty-one and is buried in the Hudson City Cemetery.

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Exhibition Opening in New York Next Week

Not everyone knows that John Ashbery, the acclaimed poet who made his home here in Hudson, was also a visual artist, his medium collage. On Thursday, September 20, a new exhibition, the most comprehensive of Ashbery's visual art to date, opens at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, 144 West 14th Street. 

A Dream of Heroes, 2015

The exhibition, John Ashbery: The Construction of Fiction, spans seven decades of work, presenting 120 collages and archival materials. To quote the press release for the exhibition:

The prolific collage work produced by Ashbery over the last decade of his life allows new insights into the creative process of one of America's most reticent poets. What many saw as a poet's late foray into the visual arts was, in reality, a return to an early vocation that morphed into complex hybrids. Composition, whether with images or words, was Ashbery's métier and collage had been his technique of choice since he began his career as a poet. The mixing of visual arts and literature was also a distinctive trait in the works of authors that have been of central interest to Ashbery, namely French writer Raymond Roussel and American outsider artist Henry Darger. Ashbery, like Roussel and Darger, conveyed narrative through the juxtaposition of seemingly random imagery that left to the reader the task of filling the gaps and making connections.

Conservatory, c. 1972

The exhibition is curated by Antonio Sergio Bessa, director of curatorial and education programs at the Bronx Museum, and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog and public programs. The opening reception takes place on Thursday, September 20, from 6 to 8 p.m., on the second floor of the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, 144 West 14th Street in New York City. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, runs from September 21 through November 14, 2018. The gallery is open Monday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and until 8 p.m. on Thursdays.
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South Side, North Side

The development of the Kaz warehouse site on the city's south side, adjacent to The Wick Hotel and within view of the train station and Henry Hudson Riverfront Park, is, after two and a half years, stalled indefinitely, with no clear path forward except perhaps pursuing eminent domain to acquire the CSX property, considered critical because it gives the site access to South Front Street. Community concern about the project and its impact on the character of the city and the perceived lack of transparency in the development process being carried out by HDC (Hudson Development Corporation) brought a halt to the project back in May. 

Meanwhile, on the north side of town, HHA (Hudson Housing Authority) is pursuing its plan to construct 80 units of new housing at State and North Second streets, just across from Bliss Towers. 

The project involves two buildings: one for seniors and another mixed income building for families earning between 30 and 80 percent of area median household income. The co-developers involved in the project are Duvernay + Brooks and PRC (Property Resources Corporation). The architect of record is Peter Clements, director of design and construction for PRC. 

What's being proposed are buildings that are four stories high, which will require an area variance because Hudson's zoning limits building height to three stories. HHA executive director Tim Mattice told the board that the buildings must be "market rate quality," which apparently means each building has a fitness room and a computer room. The only concern about the appearance and design character of the buildings expressed at the HHA board meeting last Wednesday was voiced by board chair Alan Weaver who said the idea was "not to just plop down something that looks like the building we are in."

At Wednesday's meeting, the HHA board moved forward with the project, approving the terms that will be in the Master Development Agreement with Duvernay + Brooks and PRC. When HHA board member Randall Martin said he wanted more time and more discussion with the board about the terms of the agreement, Mattice told him, "That's why we have Dan. We have legal counsel guiding us." Mattice was referring to attorney Daniel Hubbell, who has been retained for the project and was present at the meeting. 

After the resolution approving the terms had been passed, Mattice suggested that a subcommittee of the board be created to carry out the project. He indicated two members would be a minimum and three would be ideal. Four members of the board volunteered: Martin, Mary Decker, Weaver, and Robert Davies, the board's new resident member.
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Errant Cars Strike Warren Street Buildings

If bad things happen in threes, we should expect another car to jump the curb on Warren Street and strike a building sometime soon.

On Wednesday night, just before 8 p.m., a car traveling west on Warren Street hit a parked car and then crashed into Marx Home at 344 Warren Street. Bill Williams, of 98.5 The Cat, reported that the driver was taken into custody and would be charged with DWI.

Photo: Bill Williams

Photo: Bill Williams

This morning, at some time before 9 a.m., a car jumped the curb and was stopped in its progress by Hudson's original city hall, a.k.a. the Hudson Opera House and Hudson Hall, nearby at 327 Warren Street. 

The reason for this mishap is unknown, but it did not appear that the historic building suffered significant damage.
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First's FOIL Request

In June, the Register-Star reported that, over the prior fifteen years, the Hudson Housing Authority had lost close to $750,000 in unpaid rent on its properties, Bliss Towers and the low-rise: "Hudson Housing Authority back rent losses $750,000 in 15 years." The article reported that HHA Board of Commissioners member Peggy Polenberg blamed former HHA executive director Jeff First for failing to collect back rent and quoted her as saying, "He [First] would just allow anybody to live here and they would be allowed to live here forever and they're gone."

In response, First, presumably in an effort to redeem his tarnished legacy, made a FOIL request for all records dating back to 1998, a request that was characterized at the HHA Board meeting on Wednesday night as "asking for his whole work history as executive director." A letter making the request reportedly cited "allegations made and published in the local newspaper without allowing him to rebut." In today's Register-Star, Amanda Purcell, who wrote the article that reported the allegations, has an article about the FOIL request: "Ex-housing authority chief denies rent claims."

What's interesting is that just before the HHA Board got to First's FOIL request on the agenda for Wednesday night's meeting, it was revealed that in the past year, since the new executive director Tim Mattice has taken over, HHA had $38,301.36 in uncollectable debt, either from tenants who were evicted or from tenants who left owing back rent. That amount multiplied by fifteen results in a pretty significant number: $574,515. Not quite $750,000 but significant nonetheless.
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If Hudson Were the Whole State

Last night, the New York Times reported "Cuomo Easily Holds Off Nixon in Democratic Primary" and "Letitia James Wins Attorney General Race, Defeating 3 Rivals."

In the unofficial election night results for Hudson, however, Nixon bested Cuomo 417 to 267, and Zephyr Teachout won the attorney general primary with 466 votes to only 95 for James. Also in the attorney general race, Sean Patrick Maloney received 106 votes and Leecia Eve 13.

Click here to see the unofficial election night results for all of Columbia County. 
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PRIMARY ELECTION TODAY

POLLS ARE OPEN 

FROM NOON TO 9 P.M.

Click here for more information and to view sample ballots.

The Basilica "Antifestival" Begins Tomorrow

Basilica SoundScape, the carefully curated weekend of music, visual art, and literature that takes place each fall at Basilica Hudson, happens this weekend, beginning on Friday, September 14, and concluding on Sunday, September 16. 

Basilica SoundScape eschews traditional festival headliners in favor of exploratory work and unique collaborations across disciplines. "There will be a lot of amazing things happening at this year's SoundScape," said Brandon Stosuy of The Creative Independent, co-presenter of Basilica SoundScape. "We like to avoid the typical festival rut, so we pushed to come up with other things, like site-specific installations by visual artists Laleh Khorramian and Jungil Hong, blended sets by Lightning Bolt and Hisham Akira Bharoocha's new project Yokubari, a site-specific dance project by FlucT, Grouper solo on a piano in the 19th-century factory, an old-school Prurient noise set, and a Miho Hatori soundbath." For the full lineup of events on Friday and Saturday, click here. 

The festival ends on Sunday with a free afternoon of music, readings, performance, and food. The Sunday event, called "The Triptych," is curated by Hudson writer and artist Shanekia McIntosh and will include performance artist Martine Gutierre, cellist Zeelie Brown, singer/songwriter Lady Moon, dancer Davon, vocalist B Taylor, poet Joey De Jesus, and veteran of Warhol's Silver Factory Bibbe Hansen. 

At 11 a.m. on Sunday, Basilica director and co-founder Melissa Auf der Maur, journalists Liz Pelly and Jenn Pelly, writer Hallie Goodman, and Lady Moon (Ngonda Badila) will host a community conversation on the growing importance of preserving spaces for underground arts and artists. Panelists will discuss tactical methods that artists can use to secure space and organize collectively to ensure the survival of innovative creative communities.

For SoundScape schedules and information and to purchase tickets, click here.