Morning Activity on Warren Street

The building on the northwest corner of Warren and Third streets has been boarded up and vacant for more than a decade. During that time, it was owned first by Eric Galloway's Hudson Preservation Group; then by Galvan Partners, LLC; and now, since January 2013, by the Galvan Initiatives Foundation.

In  2008, when the proposed renovations to the building were before the Historic Preservation Commission, Galloway's factotum at the time tried to coerce the HPC by threatening to leave the building in its boarded-up state, at a major gateway to Hudson's commercial district, if they didn't approve what was proposed. What was proposed at the time involved replacing the original French doors (clearly visible in the historic photograph below, which were still in place when Galloway acquired the building) with stationary plate glass windows and scrapping all the original marble lintels, piers, and thresholds and replacing it with new marble, "because the owner doesn't like old things." The HPC held its ground, and only when the plans had been suitably modified was a certificate of appropriateness granted.

260 Warren Street sometime after 1935

The first certificate of appropriateness was granted in June 2008. But a certificate of appropriateness is only good for one year, so in June 2009, the project was back before the HPC, and a second certificate of appropriateness was granted for the same proposed renovations. The following fall, after the construction season had passed and no work had commenced, the HPC drafted a letter to the building's owner--then Galvan Partners, LLC--citing Section 13 of Hudson's historic preservation law and urging that the repairs and maintenance outlined in the certificate of appropriateness "begin as soon as practicable." That letter was never sent because the mayor at the time, Rick Scalera, now a special adviser to the Galvan Initiatives Foundation, intervened to prevent it.

In a press release issued almost exactly a year ago, on September 18, 2015, announcing the completion of work on 202-204 Warren Street (Princeton Architectural Press), 35 South Third Street (Ör), and 366 Warren Street (Hudson Home), the Galvan Foundation cited 260 Warren Street as one of the "new commercial spaces in Hudson" that it "continues to develop." This morning, it appeared that something was about to happen there.

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