An Editorial on "Ugly Construction"

Gossips is steadfast in its reporting on the deliberations of Hudson's regulatory boards and regularly publishes the images of renderings and models for proposed new construction presented to those boards--most often to the Historic Preservation Commission but sometimes to the Planning Board or the Zoning Board of Appeals. The renderings and models often provoke outraged comments from readers about the inappropriateness of the design. Given that experience, I was intrigued when I came upon this editorial in the Columbia Republican for December 2, 1919. Written a hundred years ago, it suggests there is a need for a design review board to impose "standards of taste" on new construction and prevent the construction of "buildings designed without the least sense of taste or appropriateness."

One wonders what, a hundred years ago in Hudson and its environs, inspired this denunciation of the "erection of cheap and ugly dwellings."
COPYRIGHT 2019 CAROLE OSTERINK