A Tale of Preservation: 412-416 Warren Street

Yesterday, on the first day of Preservation Month, it was explained that Gossips would not be observing Preservation Month, as it has for the past three years, with a Historic Detail Hunt. Instead, taking a cue from the National Trust's theme for this year's Preservation Month, "This Place Matters," Gossips will periodically throughout the month of May, as inspiration strikes, feature houses and places in Hudson that have survived various threats, often in an "against all odds" kind of way. The first house to be considered is the Second Empire mansion at 412-416 Warren Street, a building now owned by the Galvan Foundation.

Photo: Walter Ritchie|Galvan Foundation

The idea of featuring this house first in our observance of Preservation Month came about in a rather serendipitous way. Last week, in preparation for the public conversation about North Bay that was supposed to take place yesterday, there was a meeting at the Furgary Boat Club. (I was there in my capacity as the chair of the Waterfront Advisory Steering Committee.) During a casual walkabout, it was learned that the "siding" on the facade of one of the shacks (the one pictured below) was made up of pieces of a tin ceiling "from the Jewish Community Center."

This is of interest because, from 1941 to 1970, the Jewish Community Center was located at 412-416 Warren Street, in the Second Empire mansion built in 1870 for Cornelius H. Evans, the owner of what was then Hudson's largest and most successful brewery.

Because the house is now one of the many properties owned by the Galvan Foundation, Walter Ritchie was commissioned to do a history of the house, which was published on the Galvan website. (That history is, as all Ritchie's work, recommended reading.) The period in the house's history when the tin ceiling went into the dumpster and was salvaged to adorn a Furgary shack is summed up in this sentence from Ritchie's account: "The interior was substantially altered in the second half of the twentieth century, resulting in the loss of most of the original architectural decoration." 

Ritchie's history of the house glosses over a few decades--from the 1970s after it ceased being the Jewish Community Center until 2006 when Galvan Partners acquired it--and this is when the house's "against all odds" survival happens. Gossips has learned that in the 1970s not only was most of the interior detail stripped from the building but there was also a bad fire that destroyed even more. At some point in the mid-1970s--the era of Urban Renewal--the City of Hudson ended up owning the house, and, predictably for the era, there was serious talk of demolishing it to create a parking lot.

Photo courtesy Mary Ann Gazzola

The picture above shows the house in 1980, around the time it was acquired by the Hudson Restoration Group and rescued from a state of ruin and threatened demolition. The picture below shows the house in 1982, when the rehab was complete.

Photo courtesy Mary Ann Gazzola

In 2006, the house was purchased by Galvan Partners, and by 2008, when the picture below was taken for LivingPlaces, the paint on the brick had been removed.

The colorized post card image below, which dates from around 1900, provides evidence that the brick was painted at that time, when the house was the residence either of its original owner (Cornelius H. Evans died in 1901) or of his son Cornelius H. Evans, Jr., who inherited the house and lived there until 1941.

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