City vs. County: 11 Warren Street

Friday's Historic Preservation Commission meeting provided an update on the situation with Columbia County regarding 11 Warren Street and the county's refusal to submit plans for exterior alterations to the building to the HPC for a certificate of appropriateness. 

  

When last we reported on 11 Warren Street, both Phil Forman, chair of the HPC, and Nick Fox, code enforcement officer, had contacted the county requesting (Forman) and informing it was required (Fox) that the project apply for the certificate of appropriate from the HPC. Neither received a reply. The city attorney was then going to contact the county attorney. The outcome of that attorney-to-attorney communication was shared by Fox on Friday. What he reported was that the county attorney is claiming that the previous code enforcement officer, Craig Haigh, said it was OK, and the county has no intention of applying to the HPC for a certificate of appropriateness.

Fox also told the HPC that the county considers its buildings exempt from Hudson's preservation ordinance, citing this passage from the description of the Warren Street Historic District included in the recommendation presented by the HPC to the Common Council on March 30, 2006:

Why the words "with the exception of county owned buildings" appears in this document is not entirely understood. In 2006, the only building within the boundaries of the Warren Street Historic District was 560 Warren Street, the building designed by Warren & Wetmore and completed in 1910 as the new location of the Hudson City Savings Institution, founded in 1850 and for decades located at 23o Warren Street, now Le Perche. Gossips will not speculate about why this significant historic building would have been exempted from protections afforded by the city's preservation ordinance. Suffice it to say that in 2006 the preservation ordinance had only recently survived being suspended (the year after it was enacted) and significantly revised.   

Photo: Rowles Studio Collection, Historic Hudson

Commenting on the current state affairs, Fox said a "forever exemption" for county-owned buildings "makes no sense." Forman asserted that Chapter 169 of the code, the historic preservation ordinance, "makes it clear that everything be subject to the HPC" and that should not be negated by "a codicil in the actual designation." 

What will happen next is not clear, but it appears this face-off between the city and the county  is not over.

COPYRIGHT 2026 CAROLE OSTERINK