Pursuing an Obsession

We've seen evidence that the editor of the Hudson Daily Star was obsessed in 1851 with house numbers--or rather the lack of same--and Gossips has inherited that obsession. Several weeks ago, we published an item, which appeared in the Daily Star in May 1851, recounting the woes of gentleman contemplating a visit to Hudson who was discouraged by the arcane directions he'd been given to his destination and of servant girl from New York who had gotten lost trying to find the house she sought. 

Yesterday, our curiosity was piqued by this little item, which appeared in the Daily Star on August 4, 1851.

To my knowledge, houses were not renumbered in Hudson until 1888. What exactly did this 1851 ordinance do? 

The desire to know the answer sent me to City Hall to have a look at the Common Council minutes for 1851. The outcome was less than completely satisfying. The minutes for the Council meeting that took place on July 29, 1851, state: "Ald. McArthur presented an 'Ordinance for the numbering of Warren Street' which was read and passed." The text of the ordinance is not in included in the minutes.

At a special meeting of the Common Council, which took place the following week on August 6, the minutes report: "Ald. McArthur moved that the Ordinance for the numbering of Warren St. be so amended as to read 'An Ordinance for the numbering of the houses and lots in this City' which amendment was passed."

Still no text is given for the ordinance, but the search continues.

As an aside, in 1851, there were but two wards in Hudson: the First Ward and the Second Ward. Presumably, the First Ward was everything south of Warren Street, and the Second Ward was everything to the north. Alderman Abner H. McArthur represented the First Ward.
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Last Night's Informal Council Meeting: Part 3

Among the things of interest at last night's informal Common Council meeting, not already discussed in Part 1 and Part 2 of this report, was a proposal by Alderman Tiffany Garriga (Second Ward) that the Council pass a resolution declaring Hudson to be a sanctuary city. In advocating for this, she read the following statement:

The Hudson Common Council supports all residents, workers, and visitors regardless of immigration status. The Council has passed resolutions supporting immigrants and encouraging state and federal action. We will continue to embrace initiatives that support diversity.

The Hudson Police Department provides an essential service, ensuring our safety. The HPD should prioritize tasks to create a safe environment for all of our residents, while building trust with the community. 

Immigration enforcement does not improve our city or make the city more safe and would likely distract from other priorities. Immigration enforcement can be costly--there are costs of officers, detention, and transportation as well as the loss of contributions from people detained and deported. The threat of deportation or prosecution for no reason other than immigration status may discourage residents without legal immigration status or who have family members or friends without legal immigration status from reporting crimes or injuries, cooperating in investigations, seeking opportunities for the children living in this community, or summoning help when needed.

The Council will be discussing recommendations to optimize law enforcement policy to focus on safety concerns. At the next Legal Committee meeting we will discuss the recommendations in more detail. We encourage all Council members and members of the public to attend.

Several members of the audience, including Michael Chameides, chair of the Hudson City Democratic Committee, expressed support for such an action. The Legal Committee meeting at which the resolution will be discussed will take place on Wednesday, January 25, at 6:15 p.m.

Alderman Rick Rector (First Ward) asked about the status of the lodging tax and was told by Heather Campbell, the city treasurer, that there was no system in place to track and collect the tax and that the system required would have to be far more sophisticated than anything that the City has in place now for collecting taxes. Alderman John Friedman (Third Ward) expressed his opinion that the implementation of the tax was the responsibility of the executive branch to figure out. He suggested that, even though Governor Andrew Cuomo had not signed the enabling legislation until the end of November, the State Senate and Assembly had approved it at the end of June, and the executive branch should have started at that time creating the infrastructure necessary to collect the tax.

Rector also expressed his frustration with the Local Waterfront Revitalization Program. After recounting the history, as he understood it, of the LWRP over the past ten years, he asked, rhetorically, "Where do we stand as a community?" He went on to say, "A revision could take years, because the original one took years." (The City recently received a $45,000 grant from the Department of State to update the 2011 LWRP "to address climate change and sea level rise, as well as current planning and potential new projects.")

Audience member Linda Mussmann, who chaired the Waterfront Advisory Steering Committee when the 2011 LWRP was drafted, suggested that the City impose a one-year moratorium on waterfront development and set a one-year deadline for revising the LWRP. (A one-year moratorium on all development within the Waterfront Revitalization Area was enacted in 2006, when work on the 2011 LWRP began.) She expressed the opinion that "it would be very fair to Colarusso to stop [work on the haul road] for one year."

Don Moore, who was the president of the Common Council when the LWRP was adopted in 2011, said, "The causeway was a central issue when the LWRP went to Albany." He then asked his own rhetoric question: "How does the haul road get integrated into the overall plan?" He went on to say that the land transfer needed to be in place before the Department of State would review the LWRP, and the transfer never happened. The land transfer Moore cited is explained on page 132 of the LWRP: "Holcim has indicated it has no plans to use the 7 acres of land south of the port and may be amenable to entering into an agreement with the City whereby the company would grant to the City title or some form of title to the approximately 7 acres south of the port and transfer its holdings in the South Bay, subject to a right-of-way over the causeway, to a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) or the City. At this time, the company has indicated it has no plans to sell or provide an option on the approximately 7 acres adjacent to the port."

The City's negotiations with Holcim in 2013 for those seven acres, which ended up being close to ten acres, were protracted by a controversy over whether or not Standard Oil had ever owned part of that stretch of waterfront and complicated by the Valley Alliance discovering and producing evidence that the City of Hudson already owned most of what it was trying to get back from Holcim because the waterfront land had been illegally transferred to Holcim's predecessor, St. Lawrence Cement, back in 1981. It has since been revealed that negotiations with Holcim for the transfer of that land broke down in April 2013 because Holcim was getting ready to sell its holdings in Hudson and Greenport to A. Colarusso & Sons, which bought the property at the beginning of 2015, and Colarusso did not want to give up that waterfront land. It also came to light last spring that, according to the Department of State, the LWRP had never been officially submitted for review in 2011, and they were unwilling to review it now because it was a five-year-old document.

In the meantime, the 2011 LWRP, which was adopted by the Common Council, thus enacting its zoning provisions, could have brought a number of alterations that have already been made to the haul road and the dock before to Planning Board for review if the right people had been paying attention.
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Last Night's Informal Council Meeting: Part 2

At last night's informal Common Council meeting, Council president Claudia DeStefano reminded the aldermen that funds had been included in the 2017 budget for legal counsel for the Council. DeStefano said she had met with Andy Howard and invited comment from the aldermen about the possibility of appointing him as legal adviser to the Council. Alderman Rick Rector (First Ward) asked what Howard's current responsibilities were and was told by DeStefano that he was legal counsel to some other municipalities in Columbia County. Alderman John Friedman (Third Ward) asked, "Is Greenport one of them?" DeStefano told him no.

Andrew Howard

The whole question of counsel for the Council has some history, as does Andy Howard's connection with it. The issue of the Common Council needing its own attorney first came up in 2006, when a new mayor (Dick Tracy) and several new aldermen took office. Prior to that, legislative initiatives tended to originate with the mayor, and the Council's role was basically to approve or deny those initiatives. In that situation, having a single city attorney, who served at the pleasure of the mayor, worked perfectly well. But in 2006, the Council had its own robust and diverse legislative agenda. Crafting legislation to carry out their initiatives required the advice of legal counsel. At the time, it was believed that a referendum was required to retain counsel for the Council. So, in November 2006, there was a referendum, and it failed. 

Daniel Tuczinski

The issue came up again at the beginning of 2015, when Mayor William Hallenbeck did not reappoint Dan Tuczinski as assistant city attorney but appointed Andy Howard in his place. At the time, Friedman, who then chaired the Legal Committee, told the mayor at a Council meeting, "You fired a qualified person for a political reason. . . . You fired Dan Tuczinski because you wanted to hire someone who worked in the county attorney's office." Hallenbeck, in an interview on WGXC, claimed that his positions were "not being represented properly" by Tuczinski and that Tuczinski was "accommodating" the Council's efforts. In January 2015, after considerable discussion, during which Hallenback maintained that having legal counsel for the Councill required a referendum because it diminished the power of the mayor, the Council passed a resolution to reallocate $15,000 to pay a legal adviser for the Common Council. [All members of the Council voted in support of the resolution except Robert Donahue (Fifth Ward), who voted no, and Abdus Miah (Second Ward), who abstained.] Although the city attorney Carl Whitbeck offered the opinion that having a separate legal adviser for the Common Counsel did not violate the city charter, Hallenbeck vetoed the resolution, on the basis that it did. Unfortunately, in February 2015, when the resolution to override the veto was presented to the Council, two key aldermen were absent, and Council president Don Moore decided not to call for a vote. As a consequence, the veto stood.

This year, the money is in the budget, the mayor and the city attorney seem to agree that having legal counsel for the Council is allowed by the charter, and all that remains is for the attorney who will counsel the Council to be determined.

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Last Night's Informal Council Meeting: Part 1

After the organizational meeting was adjourned last night, Council president Claudia DeStefano opened the informal meeting for January. The first order of business was a communication, in the form of the map below, from the Hudson City School District.

The map, which is difficult to comprehend even when seen at full size, shows the land--a total of 1.2 acres--currently owned by the City of Hudson that HCSD wants conveyed to the school district. 

George Keeler, buildings and grounds superintendent for HCSD, spoke of the proposed acquisition as a "swap." When asked by Alderman John Friedman (Third Ward) what the City got in the swap, Keeler explained that the Youth Department and HCSD had a "shared services agreement": the Youth Department uses school facilities--gyms, soccer fields, etc.--without paying the usual rental fees. "Currently," said Keeler, "we're ahead of you on the swap," intimating that the City owed HCSD $4,500, since that is the value being placed on the parcel of land. Friedman said of the shared services agreement, "Sounds like an ongoing relationship that is netting itself out over time." When Keeler avouched that the land had been appraised at $5,500, Friedman countered, "I'll give the City $6,000 for it."

Alderman Michael O'Hara (First Ward) requested that streets and buildings be superimposed on the map to make it comprehensible. DeStefano referred the matter to the Legal Committee, which is chaired by O'Hara. 

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Despite the New Year, Much Stays the Same

Tonight's organizational meeting of the Common Council took all of five minutes. Council president Claudia DeStefano announced that the rules of order will remain the same and the committee assignments will remain the same. Tiffany Garriga will continue as majority leader. The single change is the minority leader. 

Last year, by some logic that escaped the average person, Abdus Miah, a Democrat, was named the minority leader of a Common Council made up entirely of Democrats and one NOP (no official party). This year, there will be an actual minority leader. Although both Robert "Doc" Donahue and Priscilla Moore ran as Republicans in 2015, neither was a registered Republican. Donahue was a registered Democrat; Moore an NOP. Since then both have become registered Republicans, so it was a tossup between them who would be the minority leader. Donahue ceded the position to Moore, and Moore accepted.
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Looking Back a Year

Tonight is the first meeting of the Common Council for 2017. It will begin with an organizational meeting, at which Common Council president Claudia DeStefano will announce the committee assignments for the year, followed by the usual monthly informal meeting, at which new resolutions are introduced.

At last year's organizational meeting, DeStefano announced her intention to establish two committees: a "housing subcommittee to address housing issues in the city" and a "bipartisan committee to examine ward boundaries" with the goal of making a proposal to be presented to voters in a referendum in November 2016. To Gossips' knowledge, neither of these committees was ever created. Although a housing subcommittee could still serve a useful purpose, the committee to examine ward boundaries was rendered completely unnecessary by the Fair & Equal initiative and its successful referendum in November.
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Haul Road Watch

Two new documents relating to the proposed Colarusso haul road have recently appeared on the City of Hudson website. The first is a letter, dated January 4, 2017, from Patrick J. Prendergast, the engineer employed by Colarusso, to Ed Stiffler, chair of the Greenport Planning Board. The second is the most up-to-date set of "Roadway Improvement Plans Quarry to Dock," originally created in July 2009 and revised in November 2016. 
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Back in the Day

This year, 2017, marks the 100th anniversary of women achieving the right to vote in New York. With that in mind, I recently came upon a commencement speech delivered by the Right Reverend William Croswell Doane, who was the First Episcopal Bishop of Albany. Doane Stuart School, which founded in 1975 by merging the Roman Catholic Kenwood Academy and the Episcopal St. Agnes School, was named for him. The speech was delivered in June 1895 to the graduating class of St. Agnes's School, an "institution maintained in connection with the Episcopal Cathedral for the education of young women." The entire speech, which was printed in the New York Times, can be read here, but here's a paragraph from it.

I believe that God will yet save this State and Nation from the aggravated miseries of an enlarged, unqualified suffrage which, in its universality of male voters, is our most threatening danger to-day. But if we are to be visited with this infliction, as a well-earned punishment for many national sins, then I believe that, when we have tasted its bitterness, we shall be brought back, perhaps through anarchy and revolution, to a democracy which shall demand for its existence government by men whom education and actual Americanism, of final interest in the Nation, qualify to govern. Meanwhile, when constitutions shall have been altered, to disturb the equipoise of the relation between man and woman, when motherhood shall be replaced by mismanaged offices, when money shall buy the votes of women, as it does now themselves; when the fires of political discord shall be lighted on the hearthstone of domestic peace, when the assertion of demanded right shall have destroyed the instinctive chivalry of conceded courtesies, when "woman," as has been well said, "once the superior, has become the equal of man, then the reaped whirlwind of some violent political reaction will be gathered in tears," by those who are sowing the wind in the mad "joy" of the Petroleuse of the French revolutions.

Doane, who was consecrated first bishop in 1869, was 63 when he delivered this commencement address. He died in 1913, at the age of 81, four years before women achieved the right to vote in New York, so he never lived to see the "fires of political discord" lighted "on the hearthstone of domestic peace" or to witness the "assertion of demanded right" destroy "the instinctive chivalry of conceded courtesies."
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Important Events Next Weekend

Image: Occupy Democrats|Facebook

There are only twelve more days to the inauguration, and many contemplate the future with disbelief, misgivings, and trepidation. If you are one of those people, there are a couple of events happening in Hudson next weekend that you should know about.

On Saturday, January 14, the Hudson Pride Foundation is hosting "a moderated community forum that will bring together political leaders and representatives of local social justice organizations, to engage in a dynamic discussion centered around community collaboration, our political future, and the intersections of our collective liberation."
Moderating the forum will be the new executive director of the Hudson Pride Foundation, Charlie Ferrusi. The panel will be made up of Didi Barrett, NYS assemblymember for the 106th District; Michael Chameides, chair of the Hudson City Democratic Committee; Tiffany Garriga, Common Council majority leader and chair of the Staley B. Keith Social Justice Center; Tiffany Martin Hamilton, mayor of Hudson; Martha Harvey, executive director & CEO of Pride Center Capital Region and Hudson police commissioner; Chelly Hegan, president & CEO of Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood; Bill Hughes, Columbia County Board of Supervisors minority leader; Elena Mosley, director of Operation Unite; Linda Mussmann, co-founder and co-executive director of Time & Space Limited; Zephyr Teachout, associate professor of law, Fordham University; Kaya Weidman, co-founder and executive director of Kite's Nest and Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ).

The event takes place on Saturday, January 14, from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Hudson High School Auditorium, 208 Harry Howard Avenue. The panel discussion will be followed by an open forum, with questions from the audience. Following the forum, an informal reception, with panelists and community members, will take place from 5 to 7 p.m. at The Shaker, 119 Warren Street.

On Sunday, January 15, at 2 p.m., there will be a rally in Seventh Street Park to show support for the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and Medicare. The rally, which is part of a nationwide rally on that day, is meant to send a message to Congress: "Show us what your replacement plan is, then we'll talk! Until then, leave our health insurance plans alone!" The message from the organizers is: "Our purpose is serious, and we expect tp have fun, too, so bring flags, children, friends!"
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A New Image of the Gifford Foundry

The Gifford Foundry and Machine Shop, which was located at the intersection of Columbia, State, and Green streets, was one of the more extraordinary buildings in Hudson. Gossips has published pictures of it before, but none does it justice. 

There is this one, which Byrne Fone used in his book Historic Hudson: An Architectural Portrait. The picture was taken after the dawn of the automobile, when building had become William Petry's Hudson Garage. Unfortunately, in this picture, the extraordinary curved wall of the building appears to be two walls meeting at a right angle.

Then, there is this picture, which appeared in the 1905 booklet Illustrated Hudson, N.Y. The picture is good, but the quality of the image--a scan of a photocopy of the original book--is not.

Next, there is this picture, taken in 1915, after the Gifford-Wood Company had moved to its new location at the end of Hudson Avenue, and the ground floor of the building was being used as the showroom for William Petry's automobile business. Again, the quality of the image, which originally appeared in a newspaper and was copied from microfilm, is sorely lacking.

Today, though, Gossips had the good fortune to discover this image of the building, labeled "Gifford Bros. Iron Founders 1870." Quite the best one yet.

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Tonight on Warren Street

As is often the case on a Saturday in Hudson, there are several gallery openings happening today along Warren Street. Shapes Effect, a solo exhibition of paintings by Katharine Mojzsis, is opening at John Davis Gallery, 362½ Warren Street (6 to 8 p.m.). Future Now, an exhibition of sculpture by Michael Richison and new paintings by Joseph Conrad-Ferm, is opening at FRG Objects & Design/Art, 217 Warren Street (5:30 to 8:30 p.m.). Broken America, new work by George Spencer, together with paintings by guest artist Will Clark and new works by gallery artists, is opening at 510 Warren Street Gallery (3 to 6 p.m.). Of particular interest is an exhibition opening at Jeff Bailey Gallery, 127 Warren Street, called Abandoned Luncheonette.

The exhibition takes its name from the 1973 Hall and Oates song of the same title. If you don't remember it, you can read the lyrics here and hear the song performed here. Here's what the gallery's press release says about the American institution that inspired the paintings, works on paper, photography, and sculpture assembled for this exhibition:

Luncheonettes came into being in the early 20th century, in small towns and big cities, serving quick meals in informal settings. The meals would be considered comfort food today: satisfying, familiar and easy to prepare, like pancakes, hot dogs or cupcakes. The environment would be shiny, clean and welcoming, for dining alone, a couple on a date, or small parties.

Perhaps their simplicity and familiarity is just as comforting as the food. Over and over again, one knows what to expect. But when your local or favorite luncheonette is shuttered, what memories might remain?

Abandoned Luncheonette includes works by Conor Backman, Lisa Beck, Francis Cape, Jennifer Coates, Adriana Farmiga, Frederick Hayes, Richard Klein, Tracy Miller, Walter Robinson, Nancy Shaver, Amy Talluto, and Tony Thompson. The opening reception is from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibition continues through February 19.
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Another View of Hudson in the 19th Century

Yesterday, Gossips published excerpts from the letter to the editor that appeared in the New-York Daily Times for May 28, 1853, and told how Hudson was once "a place of no mean importance," was now in decline, but was "looking forward to better days" thanks to creation of the Hudson Iron Works. Today, we share a different view of Hudson, expressed in an article about the artist Arthur Parton (1842-1914), written by Gilbert Cranmer, which appeared in the American Art Journal in 1895. 

Mr. Parton was born in the staid, picturesque old town of Hudson, New York, something over fifty years ago. He was fortunate in this birthplace, for Hudson has, perhaps, produced more artists of the first rank than any other town of the same size in this country. The venerable Frederick Edwin Church, whose "Niagara" remains a generation after it was first exhibited one of the most impressive products of American landscape art, has passed the better part of his professional career in Hudson; John B. Bristol was born and passed his earlier years in and about the town; the life work of the late Sanford R. Gifford had its inception there, while Mr. Parton's brother Ernest, whose work as a painter begun here has been wrought out with notable success on the other side of the sea, was born and reared in Hudson. Others might be mentioned, but these names are sufficient to indicate the influences under which Mr. Parton came to manhood and which could not help but be potent in shaping the career of a youth imbued with artistic impulses and an abiding love for the beautiful.

Below is Arthur Parton's painting of South Bay and Mt. Merino.

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Planning Board Meeting Next Thursday

On Tuesday, Tom DePietro, who chairs the Planning Board, told the Conservation Advisory Council that the Planning Board would not be discussing the haul road at its January 12 meeting because no new information had been received from Colarusso. Since then, there has been change of plan. A discussion of the haul road "Project Narrative" is on the agenda for Thursday's meeting, along with several other things.

First on the agenda are two public hearings, which were supposed to happen in December but didn't because there wasn't a quorum. The subject of the first public hearing is the proposal to transform 214-216 Warren Street, formerly the Savoia, into a hotel to be called the Howard Hotel; the second is the plan to open a cafe, to be called House Rules Cafe, at 757 Columbia Street.   

Three new applications for site plan review are expected to be presented: constructing new townhouses at 6-12 Hudson Avenue; converting the building at 886 Columbia Street into six office suites; and plans for 34 Allen Street, the former Allen Street School.

After all this has happened, the Planning Board will discuss the project narrative prepared by Colarusso engineer Pat Prendergast. It will be an opportunity, DePietro told Gossips in an email, "for Board members to voice their remaining questions concerning the document." DePietro went on to say: "Citizens will be invited to speak if they have information or documents not already mentioned by the Board. We encourage written comments for the sake of compiling a clear public record." For all interested in reviewing it, the project narrative is online at the City of Hudson website. 
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C. C. Alger, the Iron Works, and Boom and Bust

Gossips has written about Charles Coffey Alger on a few occasions in the past. Alger, the subject of an excellent lecture by Walter Ritchie last month, was the original owner of Gothic Revival house at 59 Allen Street, the designer and the one of the founders of the Hudson Iron Works, and an significant patron of Sanford Robinson Gifford. Recently, in a box of research files temporarily in my possession, I discovered these Alger-related items.   

The first is an image of the entire engraving that appeared on an 1858 map of Columbia County. The detail of the engraving that shows the house has been published on Gossips several times, but the engraving is equally interesting for the other structures shown in it. Although most of the buildings on Allen Street east of Second Street were not constructed until the late 1860s, Allen Street going west and Cross Street seem to be quite built up in 1858, and, of course, there are those buildings that appear to be on Front Street.

Another item found in the files is this picture of C. C. Alger himself. 

     
Perhaps the most interesting discovery is a photocopy of a letter to the editor that was published in the New-York Daily Times on May 28, 1853. Bearing the headline "The Old City of Hudson," the letter is early evidence of Hudson's boom and bust history. The entire letter can be read here, but we'll quote a bit of it. The point of the letter, written by someone who identified himself only as "A.," is to extol the regenerative impact on the city of the Hudson Iron Works. Here's how the letter begins:

Do you know anything about this City of Hudson? I presume not. Few persons do, and yet the time was when it was a place of no mean importance. It was settled in 1783-4, by an enterprising Company, chiefly from Nantucket. Energy and capital soon gave it a respectable rank among the commercial ports of our young country, and it was once the boast of its citizens that the tonnage owned in the city was greater than that owned in New-York, as most of the vessels sailing from that port were the property of Eastern merchants. Not only as a place of enterprising business was the City formerly one of note, but also as the headquarters of men of high standing at the bar. But as in the case of other places in this part of the land, revolutions in the mode of transportation gradually removed the centres of business, and during thirty years the business of the place declined, and for five or ten years back it has been called upon to live upon the capital of its former reputation, without which it would have been but a fourth-rate village, scarcely known or noticed. But now again its citizens are looking forward to better days.

Oddly, this letter, which makes reference to "revolutions in the mode of transportation," was written two years after the completion of the Hudson River Railroad, connecting Hudson with New York and Albany. According to the letter, what ensured Hudson's future was the vision of "its most enterprising men," who "purchased a valuable ore bed of red hemotite at West Stockbridge, and erected on made ground south of the City two large stacks with the corresponding buildings," to manufacture pig iron.

After celebrating the potential of the iron works to revitalize Hudson and expressing the hope that "the success of this attempt may lead to the establishment of other works for puddling and rolling iron, and eventually to the creation of a large and remunerating manufacturing interest," the letter concludes:

I ought not to neglect noticing the improvement in the outward aspect of the place. Of late years the streets that formerly were insufferably hot in Summer, have been adorned with shade trees of various kinds, and a part of Allen-street, on the south side of the city, will compare favorably with the famous streets of some of our noted villages for the beauty and taste of the dwellings and gardens, and the refreshing shade that already begins to render tolerable a stroll even on a Summer's day. Those who wish to keep up with the world will do well to take a look at this city before it becomes a disgrace not to know it.

And so it goes. We are back in the place where it is a disgrace not to know this city.
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Viewing What Was Lost

One thing that unites old Hudson (Hudson by birth) and new Hudson (Hudson by choice) is a fascination with the neighborhoods lost to Urban Renewal in the early 1970s. A few years ago, Hillsdale historian Peter Cipkowski started digitizing and sharing his grandfather's photographs, taken between 1939 and 1966, which document South Front Street, the area where his grandfather lived, worked, and raised his family. Jozef Cipkowski (1900-1977) immigrated to Hudson from Poland in 1925, married Anna Piast, whose family lived on Cross Street, and owned and operated Chipp's Market at the corner of South Front Street and Fleet Street until the building where the market was located was demolished in 1970.

Photo: Jozef Cipkowski

In the past, Peter Cipkowski has presented his grandfather's photographs to standing-room-only crowds. Now he has assembled the images into a continuous video exhibition installed at the Hudson Area Library. Entitled Hudson's Lost Neighborhood: Remembering South Front Street, the exhibition can be viewed at the History Room in the library, now through March, during regular library hours: Tuesday and Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Thursday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. 
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Of Interest: Habitat for Humanity in Albany

"When Habitat for Humanity comes up, the image that probably pops into a lot of people's minds is that of a volunteer org getting together on weekends and building small houses, one at a time." That's the lede in this article about Habitat for Humanity Capital District, which appeared yesterday on All Over Albany: "Bringing Albany buildings back from blight and making them into owner-occupied homes." 

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Same Location, Similar Woes

Bill Williams of 98.5 The Cat reported this afternoon that the New York State Police in Livingston conducted an "Underage Drinking Initiative"--in other words, a sting--yesterday at twenty-two retail stores throughout Columbia County: "Underage drinking sting in Columbia County." Only two of the twenty-two stores were in Hudson--the Beer Store at 40 Green Street and Lucky's Gas Station at 718 Columbia Street--but, alas, the only place where the underaged buyer was able to purchase alcohol was the Beer Store. 

Coincidentally, the Beer Store is located in the same building as the ill-fated Fine Wines & Liquors, which lost its liquor license in the summer of 2014 because the licensee of record was not involved in the day-to-day operation of the business and adequate records of business transacted had not been kept. Curiously, the woman arrested yesterday at the Beer Store, Ankita Patel, has the same last name as Aanal Patel, the absentee licensee at Fine Wines & Liquors, and Dharmesh Patel, the ersatz manager of Fine Wines & Liquors back in 2014.

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Report from Tuesday's CAC Meeting

Last night, the Conservation Advisory Council gathered for its first meeting of 2017, with three of its seven members absent. The CAC, which defines its purpose as "to provide objectively researched guidance to the Common Council, and by extension to other city entities and the public, on issues with environmental implications," obviously has a role to play in the Planning Board's review of the proposed Colarusso haul road. Last night Tom DePietro, chair of the Planning Board, was present to discuss that role.

DePietro told the CAC that it was hard to determine a schedule for the review process. He noted that the Greenport Planning Board, which has been designated the lead agency for the SEQR process, has a "broad timetable for the process" but asserted that the large turnout of Hudson residents at its last meeting showed the Greenport Planning Board "they can't separate things; they can't do it without us." DePietro predicted that the haul road would not be discussed at the Hudson Planning Board's next meeting because he has established a policy that the board will not consider things that have not been submitted ten days prior to the meeting, and since he had not received any new material regarding the project, it would not be taken up at the Planning Board's next meeting, which will take place on January 12.

DePietro said Ray Jurkowski, the engineer who is consulting with the Planning Board on the proposed haul road, is "excellent," but continued, "As much as he knows about environmental engineering, the CAC needs to have input." Jonathan Lerner, who chairs the CAC, suggested there needed to be an "up-to-date environmental assessment from someone like Hudsonia." At the request of Scenic Hudson, Hudsonia did a study of South Bay in 2008. DePietro recommended that the CAC make a formal request to the Planning Board for such a study. Lerner said he would draft letter to both the Hudson Planning Board and the Greenport Planning Board asking that the SEQR process be delayed until a comprehensive environmental review can be completed.

At its meeting, the CAC also talked about street trees--in particular, plans for replanting trees on Front Street, where the existing trees, all ash trees, are threatened by the emerald ash borer. CAC member Dale Shafer presented a plan for interplanting new trees so that, when the ash trees succumb and must be removed, the street will not be bereft of trees.

The large brown dots in the image above indicate existing ash trees. The smaller dots--some yellow, some red--indicate the placement of new trees. (If you click on the image to enlarge it, you should be able to see those smaller dots.) According to Shafer, the new trees and the cost of planting them will be paid for by the Galvan Foundation.

CAC member Holly Gardner expressed concern that the plan assumed all the ash trees were doomed when it had been the opinion of some arborists who had inspected the trees that some of them might be treatable. She told her colleagues that she had recently learned that the Department of Environmental Conservation was making grant money available for urban forestry, money that could be used for treating the ash trees. CAC member Carol Smilie urged Gardner to go back to her notes and figure out which trees were the best candidates for treatment.
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Marist College Band and the Inauguration

It was learned several days ago that, the Marist College band had accepted its invitation to participate in the inauguration of Donald Trump, on January 20. Yesterday, WAMC reported about a petition, initiated by a 2003 Marist College graduate and former band member, urging the band to decline its invitation, alleging that "Trump's history of racism, bigotry, and sexism does not reflect Marist College values." The story wasn't made available online until last evening, twelve hours after it was first aired, but if you missed it yesterday, you can hear it now: "Petition Asks Marist Band to Bow Out of Inauguration Performance." 
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SEQR and the Haul Road

Last Tuesday, at the Greenport Planning Board meeting, Ray Jurkowski, who is the engineer from Morris Associates retained as a consultant on a regular basis by the Greenport Planning Board and for the Colarusso haul road by the Hudson Planning Board, said of the proposed project: "They are calling this a haul road, but this is an expansion or an extension of the mining permit." Jurkowski's observation feeds the fears of many: that the proposed haul road, especially the alterations to the causeway through South Bay to accommodate two-way traffic, means increased mining activity and hence increased activity at the dock on Hudson's waterfront.

The activity at the dock was already expanded beyond what O&G was doing in the past. Not only is stone from the quarry being hauled by truck to the dock to be loaded on barges, but asphalt is being offloaded from barges onto the dock and then loaded onto trucks to be carried back to Colarusso's headquarters on Newman Road. So if the haul road will enable this increased activity, why is the Greenport Planning, which has been granted lead agency status, apparently dismissing Hudson's concerns about the dock and everything between the dock and the western end of the haul road?

Because the haul road passes through two municipalities, the project is subject to coordinated review, which is described in the SEQR Handbook in this way: 

Coordinated review is the process by which all involved agencies cooperate in one integrated environmental review. Coordinated review has two major elements: establishing a lead agency and determining the interests and concerns of involved agencies so these interests and concerns may be considered by the lead agency in the determination of significance and in scoping an environmental impact statement.

As we know, in November, the Department of Environmental Conservation decided to make the Greenport Planning Board the lead agency. It falls to the Greenport Planning Board, as lead agency, "to decide whether an EIS (environmental impact statement) will be required and to decide the scope and acceptability of an EIS." As lead agency, the Greenport Planning Board also "has an obligation to consider the concerns of other involved agencies." The Hudson Planning Board is one of those "other involved agencies," so dismissing the Hudson Planning Board's concerns about what happens at the dock and between the dock and the western end of the haul roads seems completely inappropriate.

A few days ago, a reader brought this question and answer from page 179 the SEQR Handbook to my attention:

9. Does a municipal board have to consider extraterritorial environmental impacts, for example: impacts occurring in an adjoining municipality? 

Yes. For example, a planning board reviewing a cellular communications tower visible from a neighboring community should consider the aesthetic impact of the tower on the neighboring community. A town planning board reviewing a big box development should consider the impact of the development on the community character of a neighboring village that might suffer business displacement as a result of the approval of the big box development. A third example would be a community reviewing a shopping plaza that generates traffic on an adjoining community's roadway system. In that case, the host community's review should consider the traffic on the adjoining community.

This question and answer addresses the impacts of a project wholly within one municipality on a neighboring community. If SEQR should look at the impacts of traffic generated by a shopping mall on a neighboring community, then surely what happens when trucks leave the haul road at the western end and what happens at the dock should be part of the "whole action" subject to SEQR review.
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You Can Get There from Here . . . on Foot

The Daily Freeman reports today that work on the Hudson River SkyWalk, the scenic pedestrian trail connecting Olana, home of Frederic Church, with the home of his mentor Thomas Cole, across the river, will resume next Monday: "Skywalk project resumes Jan. 9 on Rip Van Winkle Bridge."

Photo: Hudson Valley Hiking

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On Being a Newspaper Editor in the 1850s

Regular readers of The Gossips of Rivertown may have noticed that I sometimes become obsessed with characters I encounter from Hudson's past. An enduring fascination has been with Fred W. Jones, owner of the New York Coral and Shell Marble Company, who, from 1874 to 1889, built the "mountain railroad" from the quarry to the river, which has evolved into what we now know as the "haul road." In 2015, it was Officer Frank Miller and his exploits on the Hudson police force in the early decades of the 20th century. At the beginning of 2017, I confess a special fondness for Alex. N. Webb, editor and proprietor of the Hudson Daily Star.

Image: NiemanLab

Lately, I've been reading issue after issue of the Daily Star, beginning in 1851, the earliest issues of the paper available online at Fulton History. I'm researching a particular topic, but I'm easily distracted. What I'm finding especially intriguing are items in the paper that express the thoughts of Webb himself and provide insight into what it was like to be the editor of a newspaper in Hudson--and probably anywhere else--in the mid-19th century.

There are frequent reminders and admonishments to subscribers to pay their subscription fees. On April 25, Webb elaborated on that problem, along with some others.

Later that year, on July 14, 1851, Webb endeavored to describe for his readers what the job of a newspaper editor entails.

Webb attributes this item to the Rochester Daily Times, but it's easy to imagine that Webb may have personalized it a bit--perhaps the part about taking care of babies and rocking the cradle. From information found in the 1855 New York State census, we can extrapolate that in 1851, when he published this, Webb was 34 years old, married, and the father of two. (Webb and his wife, Caroline, would ultimately have six children.) It's tempting to wonder if the reference to being "assaulted and battered by some unprincipled demagogue" had any basis in Webb's personal experience.

On July 21, 1851, Webb published this item defending the freedom of the press.

These are sentiments that might be shared today by the editorial staff of the Enid News & Eagle, but it's intriguing to wonder if Webb had some specific Hudson incident in mind.

The month of July in 1851 appears to have been unusually hot in Hudson, inspiring Webb to complain the heat was preventing anything interesting from happening and was also interfering with his creative process.

On July 25, 1851, Webb employed the want ad format to complain while at the same time to describe the talents needed to run a newspaper office.

In 2017, I have to admit that it doesn't take "two bales of imagination and a crate of fancy" to conjure up items for The Gossips of Rivertown. It just takes some sleuthing through newspapers left to us by the likes of Alex. N. Webb and his 19th- and early 20th-century colleagues in the Fourth Estate.
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Thoughts for New Year's Day

On the first day of 2017, a year we begin with uncertainty and foreboding, Gossips returns to the Hudson Daily Star from a hundred and fifty years ago to share the New Year's Day message that appeared in the paper on January 1, 1857.

Best wishes for the new year. May we all, in 2017, work toward "a plentiful harvest of GOOD, to ourselves and all others within our influence." Excelsior!
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