The Register-Star about the stop-work order at 402-404 Warren Street: "Historic preservation violations stop Galvan hotel construction."
In it, Walter Chatham, who describes his role with the project as "advising architect," has this to say about the original marble that was removed from the building:
"[T]hat marble was removed because steel beams installed during a 20th-century renovation cracked it," Chatham said. Construction workers still have the original, removed marble and can incorporate it into another part of the hotel while covering the part of the building where the marble was supposed to be with a real marble veneer, Chatham said.
"We left the steel beams that were put in front of the brick, so we have to bring new marble forward in order to cover that steel," Chatham said.
"It is not like the cracked marble removed by construction workers was "carved by Michelangelo."
"It was three fairly crude pieces of marble over around the doorway and then a fourth up at the corner, and all of them had deteriorated over time. Acid rain is not kind to marble," Chatham added. "I think the best we can offer is a real marble colonnade that, I don't want to use the word imitates, but I guess that's the right word, imitates what we think was on the building originally."
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| Removed marble pillar and lintel--Photo: Matt McGhee |
The issue of the hotel and its violations is expected to be taken up by the Historic Preservation Commission at its next meeting, on September 11. Regarding that meeting, Chatham is further quoted in the article as saying:
"We hope to present an acceptable program that will allow (the commission) to remove the stop-work order even as we negotiate with them and finalize details," Chatham said. "They (the contractors) were right in the middle of installing an elevator, so we were hoping to get the stop-work order removed fairly quickly."
According to Chatham, "Galvan hopes to open the hotel by the holiday season and get permission from the commission to work on the hotel's interior by its next meeting."
COPYRIGHT 2O26 CAROLE OSTERINK
Chatham's comment that "It's not like the cracked marble removed by construction workers was 'carved by Michelangelo'" is absurd and beside the point. It's not a question of the material per se; it's that, as Gossips stated in a previous post, "the surviving marble columns and lintel...bore traces of the building's and Hudson's history." Removal of the original marble erases that glimpse into Hudson's history for the curious passer-by.
ReplyDeleteAs bad as the loss of irreplaceable and historic materials are, there's another pernicious aspect to Walter's statement and what it reveals about the character of his employer: "we only broke the law a little, what's the big deal?" This is akin to arguing that killing an older person is less of a crime than killing a younger person. These expressions speak to a mindset that is entitled, to which the rules the rest of us follow do not apply. And it's rampant in Galvan's past practice. Its minions - Walter included - appear before Planning and the HPC, nod and agree, then immediately disregard the applicable orders. In the past, Code Enforcement often felt frustrated that the City Court let many violations slide or reduced penalties to the point that citations seemed meaningless. Let's hope that with a new CEO and staff, the Court will play its rightful part in ensuring the laws are adhered to and violations are treated with the severity they deserve.
DeleteWhat do other historic district cities do to manage this sort of thing so that there are no surprises, compliance, and no undue cost burdens on developers.
ReplyDeleteApplicants deviating from approved plans doesn't appear to be entirely uncommon. It happened earlier this year in Beacon, prompting their Planning Board chair to use some pretty strong words [1]. That wasn't in the context of historic preservation but it's fundamentally the same infraction.
DeleteWhat's interesting about that case is that the applicant is the Baxter group which if memory serves me right built the Depot Lofts.
[1]: https://highlandscurrent.org/2026/07/17/righting-the-wrongs/