Friday, December 23, 2016

Report from the HPC

On Friday morning, after the Historic Preservation Commission took its official vote to deny a certificate of appropriateness for the demolition of 718-720 Union Street, HPC chair Rick Rector announced that the building would be demolished anyway. He explained that Ray Jurkowski, the engineer retained by the City of Hudson, and Craig Haigh, code enforcement officer, had determined that, in the interest of public safety, the building should be demolished.

After a public hearing, at which there was only one member of the public present to make a comment, the HPC considered the application to "renovate and restore" 21 Rossman Avenue.


After considerable deliberation, the HPC agreed to grant a certificate of appropriateness only to the proposed additions to the house: a new entrance and courtyard at the left of the building and two "glass boxes" at the back of the house. The original design of the house will remain intact except that the porch at the right will be enlarged and a vent at the attic level on one side of the house will be replaced by a window to match the window in the same position on the other side of the house.
COPYRIGHT 2016 CAROLE OSTERINK

4 comments:

  1. Always sad news to see a historic building taken down. I would hope that the City would at least allow preservationists to document (photographically) the building (with appropriate engineering supervision).... Also, as a side note, the two pictures of the 21 Rossman house is the kind of presentation we should have for the proposed changes to Promenade Park, which is one of the most historic "structures" in Hudson; i.e. we need to see the proposed changes in their context. --pm

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  2. Was 718 - 720 originally a good structure that has been mistreated through its lifetime ending in its demolition?

    Wondering what its original intention was - a barn, factory, stable … it couldn't have always been a dump .

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    1. The prospective owner researched the building, looking at atlas maps and Sanborn maps (as required by the Historic Preservation Commission), and concluded that the building did not exist until the 1940s. It is believed that it was built as some sort of storage facility.

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