Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Remembrance of Things Past
Franklin Square was a public park, bordered by South Front Street, Fleet Street (the continuation of Partition Street), Ferry Street, and the railroad tracks. It ceased to exist during Urban Renewal. This morning, a reader sent me this picture of Franklin Square. The vantage point is roughly in front of what is now the Half Moon. Visible beyond the park are the tops of buildings on the other side of the railroad tracks and the buildings bordering the park along Fleet Street.
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I don't reckon the shadows are correct for a Front and Allen Street vantage. But for the corner of Fleet and Front - looking downriver so to speak - all of the other elements fit.
ReplyDeleteCan a better scan can be made? Historical documents must be scanned at at least 300 dpi resolution. Why discard important details that so improbably survived this long?
Franklin Square/Park was located from the Ferry St. Bridge to Fleet St. I'm having a challenge to visualize the same in this photo, especially w/ the bldgs. in the background. Is the 3 story bldg. in the center the former Liepshutz warehouse?
ReplyDeleteAn altogether astute assessment, Unheimlich!
ReplyDeleteThis hauntingly beautiful image provides an unique, heretofore unseen, perspective – from Fleet street (its south-side curbing in foreground) looking southwest across Franklin Park – of the buildings on the south side of Ferry street and west side of Water street.
The largest structure (center-left, on south side of Ferry street) is the Hudson House hotel building, which opened circa 1847 (as the National Hotel; it took the name Hudson House in the 1850s) and stood until its destruction by fire in the early 1960s*. The lighter-colored building to its right (beyond the third of the four dominant foreground trees) is the Hubbel Corner building. To its right (actually, across Water street, on the southwest corner) is the wholesale grocery/three-story commercial warehouse structure, with stack at its south end (well seen in photo on page 174 of Byrne Fone's "Historic Hudson." Also, check the 1950s Family in Franklin Square photo that Gossips posted on March 31st of this year, and one can see that the storage building had by then been reduced to a one-story garage-like structure.)
Which brings us to the three buildings on the far right side of the photo, likely the three buildings on the west side of Water street, running north from Ferry street. The first two of these are clearly seen in the afore-mentioned 1950s Family in Franklin Square photo. But the third, on the far right end, would therefore be the old pump house/city garage, and that I must admit is a wee bit murky in the photo.
The twin-stack structure visible at the far left of the photo must be either the old gas works down at Broad street, or the 19th-century Stove Works just north of it bounded by Franklin, Cross, and Water streets (see 1873 Beers map).
The photo is marked (lower left) with "Gutrie [sic] Hotel." Don't know that the Hudson House was ever officially called the "Guthrie Hotel," but William Guthrie was proprietor of the Hudson House in 1902-1905 (having succeeded Frank T. Langlois) and had been associated with it for more than 25 years previous.
That the Ferry street bridge as we know it (see photo of bridge and Hudson House on page 153 of Byrne Fone's "Historic Hudson") is not visible (it was built in 1905?) suggests the photo is pre-1905. (The earlier Ferry street bridge is identified on the 1903 Sanborn map simply as "iron bridge.")
The Hudson House is last listed as such in the Hudson City directories in 1917. But it was not the first to hold the name. What would become the venerated General Worth Hotel (in 1938) was called the Hudson House when it opened, in 1837. It relinquished that name when William Badgley took possession in 1850 and changed it to the Badgley Hotel/House. Post Badgley it became the Worth House, circa 1860.
One earnestly hopes that Gossips will be the inimitable hostess of further Ferry street pictorial revelation!
* Note: The demise of the Hudson House hotel building was likely the (strongly suspected arson) fire in the early 1960s that threatened the gas tanks, as discussed at Gossips on Octo. 27, 2012.