How It All Began

Gossips was back at City Hall on Tuesday afternoon, reading Common Council minutes from 1910 in the hope of finding some mention of the Hudson-Fulton Memorial Fountain. No luck. But in the process, I found these entries in the minutes for 1910. 

The first is a resolution introduced by Alderman Decker on January 27, 1910:

Resolved, That a committee of three be appointed to confer with the Assemblyman from this district with a view of changing the law so that the proposed Trunk Highway running through the westerly part of this county, to be built by the State running from New York to Albany pass through this city. 

The resolution was unanimously adopted and a committee appointed made up of aldermen Decker, Small, and Kennedy.

At the next meeting, on February 24, 1910, Alderman Decker introduced another resolution:

Resolved, That this Council favor the change of the Highway Law in relation to route No. 2 in Columbia County, so that that portion of it which formerly read "from the boundary of Columbia and Dutchess Counties north-easterly and north-westerly" read "from the boundary of Columbia and Dutchess Counties through Blue Store and Johnstown to Bells Pond and thence northerly along the turnpike and Worth Avenue to the City of Hudson," and that Assemblyman Albert S. Callan of this county be respectfully requested to introduce a bill in the Legislature to this effect, and that he be notified of this request at once.

This resolution, too, was adopted unanimously. 

Surely, in their zeal to get what is now Route 9 to pass through Hudson, the aldermen of a century ago never anticipated the consequences, a hundred years later, of their initiative.