The Evolution of a Building

The long awaited completion of its restoration, the imminent transfer of an undetermined number of properties from Galvan to Bard, and the attention in the past few weeks to the house next door have conspired to motivate Gossips to review the history of 22 Warren Street. This is how the house appears today--actually on Sunday when this picture was taken.

The story of this house over the past fourteen years is in many ways emblematic of the impact of the Galvan Foundation on Hudson. 

The house was acquired by Galvan Partners LLC (i.e., Eric Galloway and Henry Van Ameringen) in 2012. It had previously been owned by Shiloh Baptist Church, and, divided up into apartments, it housed at least four families. During the time Galvan Partners, later Galvan Initiatives Foundation, and still later Galvan Civic Housing LLC owned the house, it has been vacant.

The house has an interesting history. Prior to Urban Renewal and the innovative facade easement program, which preserved a tiny but important piece of Hudson while demolishing vast swathes of the city, this is how the building at 22-24 Warren Street appeared: two houses not one.

Preservationists in the 1970s determined that the two houses were actually one house which dated back to 1795, just ten years after Hudson was incorporated as a city and the same year Promenade Hill was designated as public space in perpetuity. In the 1970s, the two buildings were rehabilitated as one building, and a historic marker was affixed to the building identifying its design as Federal and its date of construction as circa 1795.

Gossips has no photographic evidence of what the building looked like immediately after its restoration in the 1970s, but this is how it looked in 2014, during the early days of being owned by one or another of the various permutations of Galvan. At this point, it was vacant, and, so far as Gossips knows, it still is.

In 2017 and again in 2018, this house was included in Galvan's commitments to creating affordable housing in Hudson--units for households with incomes between 50 and 80 percent of the area median income (AMI). This pledge was memorialized in the City's 2o18 Strategic Housing Action Plan. According the information published in that plan (see page 29), the building was to have four rental units: one with two bedrooms and three with one bedroom. 

In March 2018, the house was among five proposals made by Galvan for DRI funding, with the promise that it would be developed as affordable housing. In July 2018, the Hudson Preservation Commission (HPC) granted a certificate of appropriateness for the restoration of building, which reimagined it as a house of textbook Federal design.

In 2020, Walter Chatham appeared before the HPC on behalf of Galvan seeking a new certificate of appropriateness, because the previous one had expired. It's likely, although Gossips didn't report it, yet another certificate of appropriateness was required before Galvan finally got around to carrying out the proposed restoration.

In 2o26, with the restoration complete, it is not clear if the house was restored to have four rental units, if the house is currently occupied, or if the house is included in Galvan's gift to Bard. It has been rumored that the house was given to a longtime Galvan employee, but there is no evidence that this is true. The assessment rolls still list Galvan Civic Housing LLC as the owner of the property.

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