Jamie Larson has a story in today's Register-Star about the demolition going on at State and Seventh streets: "Demolition stirs up preservation questions."The article reveals that Code Enforcement Officer Peter Wurster issued a demolition permit for the project in January. The article states that "because of the safety issues presented by falling bricks [Wurster] is not required to seek any approval from the Historic Preservation Commission." It includes this quote from Wurster: "I don’t have to go to Historic Preservation when it comes to the safety of the people. I’m surprised [the building] lasted this long. The sky’s not falling. They should be on their knees thanking Mr. Galloway for saving as much as he is.”
According to the article, the addition being demolished is "believed to have been built around the turn of the 19th century to add space to the original large home for use by the orphanage." The date assigned to the addition is unlikely, since the orphanage moved to 400 State Street in 1881.
Carole, Don't we have more information on this building than that? And why, after all these years, don't we have some kind of alert system for this kind of attack? Remember the Chicken Shack!
ReplyDeleteQuite frankly, I didn't know that this building was the original orphan asylum until Pat Fenoff, city historian, raised the alarm about it after noticing the start of the dismantling last Monday night.
ReplyDeleteThe notion of having some kind of endangered building list has been talked about by Historic Hudson and the Historic Preservation Commission on numerous occasions, but both groups have a lot on their plates and other priorities. In fact, for a few years, Historic Hudson included endangered buildings in their annual preservation awards presentation. As I recall, this was one of the buildings.
The truth is that if the system were working the way it's supposed to be working this could not have happened without the review and approval of the Historic Preservation Commission.
There's a lot of information about historic properties that doesn't get shared. One of my goals with Gossips is to let people know what I know, but there's a lot that I don't know.