It's not known when the house was built. Elihu and Eliza were married in 1817, and they moved to Hudson in 1823, when Elihu purchased an interest in the city's only iron foundry. The picture below was found on Ancestry.com, identified as "Home of Elihu & Eliza Starbuck Gifford just after Civil War."
Both pictures show the belvedere that was added to the house to serve as a studio for one of Elihu and Eliza's sons, the Hudson River School painter Sanford Robinson Gifford.
The house was demolished in 1965, and at some time prior to its demise, it had been divided up into apartments. I have many times wondered what the house looked like in its latter days.
Today, while exploring the wonderful archive of Howard Gibson's photographs being made available online by Bruce Bohnsack, I discovered these two pictures taken in February 1955 and identified as "Hudson Fire Apartments 6th & Columbia St."
The building in these pictures can only be Elihu and Eliza Gifford's house, with what was originally a side veranda opening onto a fenced yard turned into the main entrance, now with a very sturdy looking Greek Revival portico.
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