Back to Montgomery Street

The acquisition of the CSX property was, as expected, a topic of discussion at the Hudson Development Corporation meeting yesterday.

Board president Bob Rasner reported that the survey and the Phase 1 environmental study had been completed on the parcel, and they were "poised to be able to set a closing date." The Phase 1 report indicated that, based on the historic use of the site, a Phase 2 environmental study might be useful. Rasner speculated that a Phase 2 environmental study would probably find only coal dust. 

Steve Dunn, who is a member of the board and serves pro bono as its legal counsel, had been asked to do a risk-reward analysis of doing a Phase 2 study. Dunn recommended that HDC not proceed with a Phase 2 environmental study "at this time," commenting, "The deed restrictions are so tight, you can't do anything on the site anyway." As Gossips reported in March, CSX us requiring a restrictive covenant "that prohibits the HPC and any future owner from using the parcel for any residential, school, recreational, agricultural or establishment of a mitigation bank."

The discussion of the CSX parcel led to talk of Montgomery Street. Currently, Montgomery Street exists in two parts. The first part begins at Third Street and goes west for less than a block before it comes to a dead end.

Montgomery Street picks up again at the intersection of South Second Street and Tanners Lane, runs behind The Wick Hotel, and comes to a dead end on the CSX parcel HDC is acquiring.

In speaking of plans to lease the CSX parcel on a month-to-month basis until a plan for the entire Kaz/CSX site is developed, HDC board member Phil Forman spoke of the status of Montgomery Street, reporting that DPW superintendent Rob Perry had said it was a street, and DPW would patch and plow it as necessary. Council president Tom DePietro, who sits on the HDC board ex officio, noted that that the determination of whether or not Montgomery Street was a street was the purview of the Common Council not the Department of Public Works. At which point, Walter Chatham, who is a member of the HDC board as well as chair of the Planning Board, said he wanted to ask the Common Council to make Montgomery Street a complete street, going from Third Street to Front Street. Chatham attested that he had walked the route and did not think it would be a difficult issue.

In 1854, as Gossips reported last December, the Road, Street and Bridge Committee of the Common Council decided against opening and grading Montgomery Street. According to the minutes of the Common Council for April 13, 1854, the decision was based on the following facts and information: 

From Third to Second Street the grade is 50 feet. Height of the embankment at Third Street 10 feet, at the west side of the Catholic Church 12 feet. [In 1854, St. Mary's Church stood at the corner of Third and Montgomery streets.] Deepest Culling 15 feet. At the intersection of Tanner's Lane the grade on Montgomery Street is 16 feet above that of Tanner's Lane, requiring 7,500 yards of earth to grade said Lane. . . . Two or more houses and lots will be made almost worthless, as the embankment will be nearly up to their roofs and a number of other lots will be inaccessible.

The owners of a large majority of the lots have notified the Committee that in the event of Montgomery Street being opened and graded that they will not pay their assessment but will give up their lots and in that case they would become a heavy tax upon the city.

Although the Common Council rejected the idea of opening Montgomery Street from Third Street to Front Street in 1854, the 1873 Beers Atlas map seems to give evidence that at some point in the intervening nineteen years Montgomery Street was in fact opened. What the map also reveals is that in 1873 Tanner's Lane did not converge with South Second Street. The Robert Taylor House did not stand at the corner of South Second Street and Tanner's Lane; rather it stood at the corner of South Second Street and Montgomery Street.

The first part of what we now think of as Tanner's Lane, the part that runs alone the south side of the Robert Taylor property (and Google identifies as South Second Street), was not Tanner's Lane in 1873 but Montgomery Street.

Road building techniques are more sophisticated today than they were in 1854, but some of the deterrents to opening Montgomery Street from Third Street to Front Street still exist. It appears that a continuous Montgomery Street would  encroach on the backyard of at least one house on Tanner's Lane. (The white line added to the Google image below shows the path of a continuous Montgomery Street.)

And a building, now part of the Red Barn Hudson project, stands in the way of Montgomery Street reaching Front Street without making a jog to the left.

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