George Washington Hung Here

The alterations at City Hall to achieve ADA compliance involve more than changes to the entrance.

There are additional changes, outside and inside the building:

• Creating a handicapped accessible parking space on Warren Street
• Installing an accessible service counter
• Removing the raised dais in the Council Chamber
• Installing new flooring throughout the first floor
• Creating a handicapped accessible restroom

These changes require that City Hall be closed while the work is being carried out, and the occupants of City Hall be relocated for the duration. Among the occupants requiring relocation is George Washington, that is, the portrait of George Washington painted by Henry Ary after Gilbert Stuart's famous 1796 Lansdowne portrait of Washington. 

To put things in historic context, the founding of Hudson happened during George Washington's lifetime. The original Proprietors were Washington's contemporaries. The Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington, which inspired Ary's portrait in the 1840s, was painted eleven years after the incorporation of the City of Hudson and three years before Washington's death in 1799.

Returning to the present, during some informal chat before last Friday's special Common Council meeting, mayor's aide Michael Hofmann noted that the Henry Ary painting was to be stored someplace during the upcoming renovation of City Hall. He mentioned Hudson Hall as a possible location. Were that to happen, the portrait would be returning to the building where it had been displayed for 107 years, from 1855 to 1962. The building now known as Hudson Hall was originally constructed as Hudson's city hall.

Council Chamber in Hudson's original City Hall, now known as Hudson Hall

Interestingly, the City of Hudson acquired the Henry Ary portrait of George Washington in 1845, ten years before the city had a proper city hall. Prior to 1855, when the construction of City Hall was completed, the portrait was displayed in a rented room in a building at Warren and Fourth streets owned by John J. Davis, "who fitted up within it a hall intended for public uses." It was in this hall that the Common Council held its meetings, and it may have been during those ten years the legend began that whenever and wherever the Council met, the portrait had to be present.

In July 2012, Gossips published a post about the portrait, which explores its acquisition in 1845 and its restoration in 1998 and 1999. Now that the portrait may disappear from public view for a while or be displayed in a different venue, it seems an appropriate time to revisit that post: "Henry Ary's Portrait of George Washington."

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