News from the HPC Meeting

The Historic Preservation Commission had a meeting this morning that lasted for a record-breaking three hours. The last projects to be considered in this marathon session were facade renovations to 364 Warren Street and a facade revision of 366 Warren Street--both buildings owned by the Galvan Initiatives Foundation.

The plan involves separating the two buildings completely and using them for different purposes. The building at 364 Warren Street is currently the site of "The Bridge," an alternative learning program for students from the Hudson City School District and Catskill Central School District. That use is expected to continue through the 2014-2015 school year. What it becomes after that is unknown. The building at 366 Warren Street is being prepared for retail use.

Much of the discussion of 364 Warren Street had to do with, as HPC member Phil Forman put it, the "target period." John O'Connell, the architect for the project, described the proposed renovation as "something that would be considered a 19th-century building." HPC member Tony Thompson called the time period evoked by the design "ambiguous," to which criticism O'Connell countered, "The building has some eccentricities to it already."

The building, which dates from 1805, originally had a gable. At some point, the gable disappeared, and the cornice was introduced. According to HPC counsel Carl Whitbeck, 364 Warren Street was "completely rebuilt" in 1980.

When the HPC voted on whether or not to grant a certificate of appropriateness, two members (Thompson and David Voorhees) voted no, and other four (Peggy Polenberg, Rick Rector, Forman, and Jack Alvarez) voted yes. Work on this building is expected to happen during the summer, when school is not in session.

[Note: The motion before the commission was to waive a public hearing and direct counsel to draft a certificate of appropriateness. Voorhees has since informed Gossips that he voted no to waiving the public hearing, because he felt the building was too important historically not to allow the public to comment on the proposed alterations.]

Although the historic photograph of 364 Warren Street shows a building to the right, the building now at 366 Warren Street is constructed of concrete blocks with an applied texture to make it appear to be brick. HPC architect member Jack Alvarez pointed out that textured concrete block like this was common in the 1920s and noted that the double windows proposed for this building were also typical of that era.

Alvarez asked if the fence shown in the renderings, which appears to be iron, was really going to be iron. There was no definitive answer. Although there is now a fence, which likely is iron, O'Connell said that they wanted to move the openings in the fence and indicated that the existing fence would probably be replaced.

The HPC voted unanimously to grant a certificate of appropriateness for the facade revision of 366 Warren Street.

Seeing the renderings of these two buildings devoid of trees no doubt strikes terror into the hearts of all who treasure the pin oaks on this site and know Galvan's penchant for felling trees. To allay these fears, Gossips reports that O'Connell explained it's hard to make trees look good in SketchUp.

COPYRIGHT 2014 CAROLE OSTERINK
Historic photograph of 364 Warren Street courtesy Historic Hudson