Where the Historic District Ends

Back in 2010, I discovered this advertisement in a February 1867 issue of the Hudson Daily Register.

Those "Desirable Houses in Hudson," constructed on spec during Hudson's post-Civil War building boom, are these houses on North Fifth Street, between Warren and Columbia streets. 

In 2018, the picture below, taken in 1967, showing the four houses a hundred years after they were built, was posted on Facebook by Bob Satter. (The third floor on 18 North Fifth Street, with its mansard roof, was very likely added toward the end of the 19th century, when Second Empire was all the rage.)

In 1967, the front porches on two of the houses--18 and 20--were enclosed. Today, the porches on two of the houses--20 and 22--are missing.

The houses are outside any locally designated historic district. The Warren Street Historic District extends north only as far as Prison Alley, and the Armory Historic District begins a block away, at State Street, and extends north to Clinton Street.  

In the block and a half between locally designated historic districts is this row of houses--37 to 47 North Fifth Street--built by Freeman Coons in 1870. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

Although listed in the state and national registers, the row of houses at 37-47 North Fifth Street are not in any locally designated historic district, so any alterations to the facades of the buildings would not require review by or a certificate of appropriateness from the Historic Preservation Commission. The same is true for 20 and 22 North Fifth Street.

According to code enforcement officer Craig Haigh, both 20 and 22 North Fifth Street are undergoing "full renovations for single family homes," which is what they started out as and what they were when most recently occupied. Haigh did not respond to a question about plans for the facades. The current owner of the two houses may be planning to do the right thing and create new porches that replicate the original porches (as seen in the 1967 photograph) and those now found on 18 and 24, but we don't know that.

The situation on North Fifth Street is yet another reason why the Historic Preservation Commission should venture out of its comfort zone and work to expand the areas of the city that have historic preservation protections. All of the historic districts that currently exist were created in a two-year window of time: 2006-2007. During that period, too, HPC applied for and received a Preserve New York grant for $9,000 from the Preservation League of New York State to survey and document buildings on the north side of town, the part of the city that was not surveyed in 1985, when the National Register Hudson Historic District was created. The purpose of that study was to inform the creation of new historic districts, but that never happened.  

In 2011, an initiative by Historic Hudson to create a Robinson Street Historic District memorably went down in flames. In 2018, an attempt by the HPC to extend the southern and western boundaries of the Union-Allen-South Front Street Historic District was ultimately abandoned after Council president Tom DePietro tabled the resolution that would have made it happen, alleging that the resolution and the accompanying documents had not been properly prepared and that some of the property owners affected by the boundary amendments had not been notified. (The allegation was based on an error in the map having to do with Worth Avenue, the eastern boundary of the district, which was not changing in any way as a consequence of the resolution.)

Over the years, the HPC has received requests from Historic Hudson (and suggestions from The Gossips of Rivertown) to extend the historic district north along Fourth Street to capture the area from the North Fourth Street Extension (created on the initiative of property owners and residents of North Fourth Street between Prison Alley and Columbia Street) to the locally designated landmark (and individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places) Hudson Almshouse. Those requests/suggestions were never pursued by the HPC. If they had been, the HPC would be able to weigh in on the design for Kearney Realty's other proposal for Hudson: State Street Lofts--a building that would be oriented toward an alley (Long Alley) instead of an actual street (North Fourth Street or State Street).

The Historic Preservation Commission is the most hardworking and efficient of Hudson's regulatory boards. It meets twice a month--regularly--and its decisions are typically rendered in a matter of weeks rather than years, as is the case with the City's current Planning Board. On a few occasions, the HPC has been duped, as Stanley Moon was by the Devil in Bedazzled, because certificates of appropriateness were not worded carefully enough, but overall, the HPC has been a bulwark, protecting the authenticity of Hudson's architecture and the historic character of our city. One criticism of the HPC, however, is that it has not been proactive or sufficiently resolute in expanding the areas of Hudson protected by the City's preservation ordinance.

Thanks to former mayor Rick Scalera, all historic preservation designations must be made by the Common Council. Perhaps new leadership on the Council will change things.

COPYRIGHT 2025 CAROLE OSTERINK