Trees of New York

Nancy Shaver, whose eye for the vernacular and the eccentric I regularly admire, has this wonderful object in the window of Henry, her shop at 348 Warren Street. It's a display of specimens of limbs from trees indigenous to New York, each cut crosswise and lengthwise to reveal the characteristic patterns of the wood as well as the bark. Each specimen is accompanied by a little typewritten label that gives its common name, its botanical name, and its uses. I don't know its provenance, but it looks like it might be a deacessioned exhibit from Norrie Point or some other DEC facility.

BP and Responsibility

A reader passed along this photograph, taken at a BP gas station.

Holcim and O&G Respond

Last night at the informal Common Council meeting, one of the communications received was a letter to Common Council President Don Moore from Holcim attorney Donald Stever and O&G's Kenneth Faroni.

You can read that letter by clicking here.

[ADDENDUM: Here's the link to Moore's March 15 letter commenting on the LWRP which is referenced in the Holcim/O&G letter.]

An interesting complement to the content of the Holcim/O&G letter is this video produced by the aggregate industry.

Ferry Street Bridge Update

Last night at the informal Common Council meeting, Mayor Scalera reported that CSX had agreed to repair the Ferry Street bridge in time for the Flag Day parade. They will replace the rotted planking "to get through the weekend" and put plywood on the footbridge. CSX also said they would "try to put it in some capital plan."

According to Scalera, someone named "Mr. Ward" is the decision maker when it comes to capital projects--the person to get to if we want more than a "band-aid" solution to the problem. Senator Charles Schumer is expected to march in the Flag Day parade, and Scalera is hoping to get Schumer to "jump on the bridge" to test its stablility for himself and use his influence to help achieve a satisfactory and lasting solution to the problems of the bridge.

Galloway Gallery: Exhibit 12

This is 61-63 North Seventh Street, owned by Eric Galloway's "Hudson Preservation Group." Presumably stored in this building are the columns from the porticoes at 202-204 Warren Street and the French doors from 260 Warren Street. There may also be, according to a Gossips commenter, a pair of black marble mantels which were removed from 302-304 Warren Street during the time Galloway owned that building.

It was rumored that Galloway bought this building from mayor's aide Cappy Pierro in the early years of this decade for what seemed like a princely sum for a storage building.

Thurston Park

Back in the 1990s, this little park in the 200 block of Warren Street was a dusty vacant lot used as a boccie court. That's when Carrie Haddad had the idea of turning it into a park--a restful place where people could sit and enjoy being outdoors. She took her idea--which also involved landscaping around the Boys & Girls Club--to Ann Vedder, who then headed up HCDPA (Hudson Community Development and Planning Agency). Vedder told her to submit a plan, and she would see what she could do about funding it.

Working with Ramon Lascano and various landscape designers, Haddad came up with a design: an elegantly simple allée of Bradford pear trees lined with park benches--vaguely reminiscent (in miniature) of Literary Walk in Central Park. Jeremiah Rusconi found the vintage fence to separate the park from the street, and HCDPA provided the funding: $14,000 for developing the park and for landscaping at the Youth Center. The plan for the park originally included beds of flowers and a second fence to separate off the children's playground at the back, but those elements of the plan were never implemented.

Early on, one of the trees in the middle of the allée, on the west side, died. DPW removed the dead tree but never replaced it. Now another tree--the one closest to the street on that side--is dead. With two trees gone, the imbalance in a park that was meant to be symmetrical will be hard not to notice.

The park was completed in 1997--coinciding with "The Secret Gardens of Hudson," a garden tour cosponsored by the Hudson Opera House and Historic Hudson. The new pocket park was included in the tour, and for the occasion, Historic Hudson gave the park a name: John Thurston Park. John Thurston was one of the original Proprietors and the first to own this plot of land after the City of Hudson was established.

When Ellen Thurston was named Citizen of the Year by the Hudson Rotary Club, Victor Mendolia arranged for City Hall Place, next to the Hudson Opera House, to be temporarily renamed "Thurston Place." He said at the time that he was going to try to get the Common Council to make the name change permanent. A better idea--and one that would not set a precedent for the kind of wholesale renaming of streets now going on the New York City--would be for the Common Council to make what was unofficial official and name the pocket park Thurston Park--for John Thurston, who was one of the founders of Hudson, and for Ellen Thurston, who 225 years later is one of its leading citizens. While they're at it, the Council should also officially designate the pocket park as parkland.

Just in Time for Flag Day

The Register-Star reports the discovery of a "football-sized hole" in the wooden deck of the Ferry Street bridge. As a consequence, the south lane of the bridge has been closed, making the bridge just one lane. Vehicles entering and leaving the waterfront area must take turns using the north lane of the bridge, and drivers are being encouraged to use the grade-level crossing south of the train station to get to riverfront park and the boat launch.

Last year at Flag Day, a slat on the footbridge gave way when someone was crossing the bridge. According to reports at the time, the person was not seriously injured, but this morning's article indicates that he is suing CSX.

First Ward Supervisor John Musall tried to make the bridge a cause celebre when he took office in 2008. In June 2008, he, Rick Scalera, Cappy Pierro, and Rob Perry, who was then Common Council President, inspected the bridge with CSX engineer Halsey Brown. After that inspection, some of the rotted wood in the deck of the bridge was replaced but obviously not enough.

In February 2009, the Ferry Street bridge was one of five projects Scalera proposed for federal stimulus funds, along with upgrades to the waste water treatment plant, a new water line for Green Street, a new police and city court building, and a parking garage for the northeast corner of Fourth and Columbia streets (to accompany the new DSS building Scalera wants to see built on the northwest corner). Of these, only the waste water treatment plant has received stimulus funding.

Municipalities throughout Columbia County have found CSX decidedly uncooperative when it comes to replacing or repairing bridges over railroad tracks, expecting the municipalities to come up with the needed money. At the same time, CSX has been unwilling to allow new grade-level crossings.

Music in the Air

The other morning when William and I were on the homestretch of our morning walk, I heard classical piano music emanating from somewhere nearby. It wasn't recorded music; it was live. Was one of my neighbors a secret piano virtuoso?

Then I recalled hearing that pianists Vladimir Pleshakov and Elena Winthur, who closed their Pleshakov Music Center on Warren Street a few years ago and departed to Hunter to establish the Pleshakov Piano Museum, were back on this side of river and living at St. Michael's Ukrainian Orthodox Church--the former Collier mansion. I was hearing internationally renowned pianist Vladimir Pleshakov practicing!

Who'd a Thunk It?

There's an article about Hudson in the weekend travel section of New York Magazine, and guess what? It gives a link to The Gossips of Rivertown! Check it out.

Galloway Gallery: Exhibit 11

This is 354-356 Union Street--an apartment building that has been owned by Eric Galloway's "Hudson Preservation Group" for several years. Early on, there were rumors that Galloway wanted to remove the mansard roof and the third floor, but the rumors were never substantiated, and a proposal to do this has never been presented to the Historic Preservation Commission.

The building is currently unoccupied, as it has been for most of the time Galloway has owned it. From time to time, people characterized by one neighbor as "transients" have lived there, but their presence caused so many problems in the neighborhood that Galloway was persuaded to leave the building empty.

Arlo Guthrie, Where Are You?

CSI: Hudson (or, The Turkey Baster Story), told by Sam Pratt on his blog, deserves to be set to music, although in this tale, there are videotapes from a surveillance camera instead of "twenty-seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one."

Dog Walk Reconnaisance

A Fence Without Offense The aesthetes of Hudson can breathe a sigh of relief. The crude wooden fence that suddenly appeared on Saturday morning around the outdoor tables at American Glory is gone--replaced by this tasteful metal railing.

It would seem that the owner of Hudson's newest restaurant didn't realize that New York State law requires outdoor cafes to be surrounded by some kind of barrier if alcohol is to be served. The wooden fence, which evolved by the selective removal of slats from a solid stockard fence to something resembling a picket fence, was apparently a hastily acquired makeshift measure to allow alcohol to consumed at the outdoor tables over the long Memorial Day weekend.

Foot Traffic Friday Just in time for tomorrow morning's ribbon cutting, the new crosswalk at Warren Street and City Hall Place (for one brief, shining moment known as "Thurston Place") has been repainted. The ceremony is scheduled for 11 a.m. in front of the Hudson Opera House.

I've heard that the Healthcare Consortium is going to present the City with signs to alert drivers to the existence of the crosswalk and remind them to stop for pedestrians. That's good news. Drivers pay absolutely no attention to it now. Crossing Warren Street between the Opera House and the PARC Park is more dangerous now than it was before there was a crosswalk--especially for people who know that New York State law requires cars to stop if there's a pedestrian in the crosswalk and assume they will. But they don't. The man on the other side of the street when I took this picture stepped off the curb clearly expecting cars to stop, but three cars whizzed by--not even slowing down.

Another Victim

When a reader called yesterday to tell me about the tree in front of City Hall, I didn't realize that there was basis for his fear that the tree might be coming down. A tree in the 400 block of Warren Street had already been cut to facilitate the installation of a new streetlight.

Judging from the size of the stump, which has yet to be removed, this was a fairly major tree. I didn't count the rings, but I would hazard a guess that the tree had graced the street for more than a decade, perhaps two, and now it's gone--cut down so that a new streetlight could be installed in exactly the same place where an old streetlight had stood for thirty years.

Trees make a street more attractive and improve air quality. They encourage foot traffic; it's more pleasant to walk on a street with trees. Can't we respect our street trees for the valuable benefits they provide instead of treating them like expendable inconveniences?

Necessity or Excess?

At about noon yesterday, Gossips received a call from an alarmed reader reporting that a DPW crew was doing a "hack job" on the locust tree in front of City Hall. What they were doing seemed too extreme for simple pruning, and he feared they might be preparing to take the tree down. Ever ready to follow up on a good tip, I prepared to hie myself to the scene to investigate, but just then it started to rain--rather hard--so I decided to do my reconnaissance by phone.

I called the Department of Public Works and spoke with Melissa, who told me that some branches of the tree had to be cut away so that the new streetlight could be installed. She assured me that the tree was not being taken down.

Later in the afternoon, I went to City Hall to see for myself. A major limb of the tree and at least one smaller branch had been removed, leaving the tree decidedly lopsided but clearing lots of space for a person on the cherry picker to install a luminaire on the lamppost. Surely what needed to be done could have been accomplished in a more sensitive way than this.

1874 in Hudson

With O&G gravel trucks rattling through the streets, an application before the Greenport Planning Board to use the old rail bed from the quarry to Route 9G as a haul road, and a draft LWRP for Hudson purporting that "the City supports" using the old rail bed through the South Bay as the continuation of that road, 2010 in Hudson seems like 1874 all over again. In that year, two plans for getting wagons carrying heavy loads of stone off Hudson's streets were proposed. The streets affected were then Union, West Court, and Allen.

At the end of January 1874, an application for one of these plans, John Berridge's "horse railroad," was presented to the Common Council. At the same time, a bill supporting the project was introduced in the New York State Senate. Here's what the Hudson Gazette had to say about the horse railroad on February 12, a week after it won approval from the chair of the Senate Committee on Railroads. The article leaves no doubt about the position of the Gazette in this matter.

"The Question Before the Legislature, Before the Common Council, and Before the People--Last week Mr. Selkreg, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Railroads, reported a bill encouraging and facilitating the construction of a railroad from the town of Greenport, Columbia county, to the Hudson River. This is a measure with which our citizens are or should be familiar, and it is surprising that it should meet with opposition from any quarter. It is well known that there is a mine of undeveloped wealth concealed in the barren rocks of Becraft Mountain. A wealth which might be made to contribute to the benefit of our whole city. For nearly a quarter of a century Mr. John P. Berridge has labored diligently among those rocks, and yet the surface is barely scaled, but the value of the stone is appreciated abroad as well as at home. Even with the small facilities at his command and the disadvantages under which he has labored, he gives employment to a large force of workmen and distributes through our city not far from six hundred dollars every week, which benefits directly or indirectly, every branch of business.

"The lines of stone teams, which pass through our streets at all hours of the day, give an idea of the extent of his business, but with his present facilities the demand far exceeds the supply. We are told that for fluxing, no stone is superior, and that every iron furnace, which could obtain it, would use it. The demand is without limit and the deposit is inexhaustible.

"Many projects have been devised for a more easy and rapid transport of the stone from the quarry to tide water, all of which have been opposed by one class or another, and have been finally abandoned, to the great detriment not only of this branch of industry, but to our city generally. Mr. Berridge now proposes to construct a horse railroad from his quarry to Green street, through Green to State street, and thence to the river. He selects this route because the track would not interfere with the business portion of the city, and would benefit rather than injure the streets through which it passed. Those who have observed street railways in other cities, even through their busiest thoroughfares, will readily conceive that Mr. Berridge's hypothesis in this respect is correct.

"The proposition was laid before the Common Council at its last meeting, and referred to the Street Committee. What their action will be, we are not advised, but we trust it will be favorable. We hold that the construction of the proposed road would be of permanent benefit to the city in many respects.

"It would save the streets, which are now necessarily kept in wretched condition, not withstanding the large amount annually expended upon them, by reason of the heavy teams constantly passing over them. From this cause, Union, West Court and Allen streets are either beds of mud or clouds of dust almost throughout the year, presenting an appearance far from creditable to the city, and yet it is a necessary evil against which we have no right to complain.

"It would furnish an article of transportation, by water and rail, which would add greatly to our commercial importance.

"And finally, it would be of substantial benefit to the property along the line of the proposed road, in the improved condition of the streets through which it passed.

"But every enterprise must expect to encounter factious opposition. It always has been so everywhere, whether the project be great or little, and the 'Greenport and Hudson Horse Railroad' is by no means an exception. Determined perseverance, however, will overcome all this, and when the road is in operation its practical benefits will be so apparent that those who now most strongly oppose it will be the first to acknowledge its public value. Such has been the history of all similar schemes. Let the legislature promptly pass the bill now before it. Let the Street Committee of the Common Council report favorably on the matter referred to them and the work will be half accomplished."

The residents of Green Street--a tree-lined residential street that was suburbia in the latter part of the nineteenth-century--petitioned the Common Council to stop the horse railroad, and at its February meeting the Council rejected the application.

At its March meeting, the Council approved the second plan: Fred W. Jones's proposal for his "mountain railroad" from the quarry to the river through the South Bay. The groundbreaking for Jones's railroad took place on May 5, 1874, but it would be another fifteen years before the railroad was complete.

Memorial Day in Hudson

Hudson elected officials, led by Mayor Rick Scalera, Treasurer Eileen Halloran, and Common Council President Don Moore, enter courthouse square at the conclusion of the Memorial Day parade. Also marching in the parade were Aldermen Sarah Sterling (First Ward), Ellen Thurston (Third Ward), Richard Goetz (Fifth Ward), and Robert Donahue (Fifth Ward); and Supervisors John Musall (First Ward), Ed Cross (Second Ward), and Bill Hallenbeck (Third Ward). In the audience at the ceremony but not participating in the march were Aldermen Chris Wagoner (Third Ward) and Ohrine Stewart (Fourth Ward).

No Trespassing?

The Register-Star reported the callous reaction of Ken Faroni of O&G (Holcim's tenant) when he was told by DPW Superintendent Rob Perry that a dog had drowned in the culvert in the South Bay and the dog's grieving humans were asking that grates be installed at the culvert to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. According to Perry, “His [Faroni's] response was that there are 'no trespassing' signs and said that people should not be on the causeway at all.”

How did the South Bay, once a center of shipping and, to quote Don Christensen, "part of the texture of life in Hudson," become a place where the citizens of Hudson cannot set foot or paw or dip an oar?

When Samuel T. B. Heermance was given a "Grant of Land Underwater" for an area of "41 acres, 3 roods, and 10 rods" under the South Bay--the entire southern part of the bay--the Letter Patent defined these conditions:

"Excepting and reserving to all and every, the said People, the full and free right, liberty and privilege of entering upon and using all and every part of the above described premises in as ample a manner as they might have done had this power and authority not been given. . . ."

When Heermance agreed to sell the land needed to build a railroad to the quarry, he sold only a narrow strip of land "one rod wide more or less" and "not doing any more injury than as surveyed by said line"--with the intention of protecting the rest of the waters. The promise at the time was to build a railroad on a trestle so that it would interfere with the bay and its use as little as possible.

In the years since that first trestle railroad devolved into the "causeway" we have today, the ownership of the underwater lands changed many times, but there seems to be no evidence that the people's "full and free right, liberty and privilege of entering upon and using all and every part" of the South Bay were ever withdrawn. Even if a deed existed that expressly withdrew those exceptions and reservations, it would likely be trumped by New York State Public Navigation Rights.

A commenter on South Bay Tragedy made reference to public navigation rights and provided the link to a brochure entitled New York State Public Navigation Rights: Questions & Answers. Here's how public navigation rights are defined: "The public right of navigation has existed in New York as a common law right ever since New York became a state. This right allows vessels of all kinds, including small boats and canoes, to navigate for commercial and recreation purposes on New York's freshwater rivers, streams, lakes, ponds and other waterways that are navigable-in-fact. Legally, the courts have said that the State of New York, in accordance with public trust doctrine, holds an easement on such waterways in trust for the people of the state, making them public highways for navigational purposes." [page 4]

Defining what is "navigable-in-fact," the brochure states: "For a waterway to be open to public use, it just has to be navigable-in-fact. It doesn't have to be declared navigable-in-fact by a court. In other words, if a waterway is in fact navigable for a significant part of the year and for a substantial distance, it is ordinarily safe to assume that it is legally 'navigable-in-fact.'" [page 6]

We know from the rendering done by Peter Jung and Bob Mechling that there's a lot more water in the South Bay than most people imagine, and we know from the experience of kayakers that is it navigable-in-fact.

A Tree Blooms in Hudson

In 2006, Eric Galloway made a gift of trees to the City of Hudson. Landscape designer Tim Legg selected the trees--two varieties of tree lilac. Galloway paid for the trees. The Department of Public Works prepared the holes and planted the trees, along both sides of Second Street, from Allen Street to State Street: the shorter species where there were utility lines; the taller species where there were none.

Needless to say, the trees have not had an easy time of it. In the stretch from Allen to Warren streets, where I walk with William at least once a day, the trees along the east side of the street between Allen and Partition have been the victims of abuse by passers-by, who have snapped off branches. Three of the taller trees between Partition and Union, though suffering no visible abuse, appear to be completely dead, and another, between Partition and Allen, is nearly so.

But the good news in this sad tale of how tough it is to be a street tree in Hudson is that one of the taller trees is now in bloom--for the first time, I believe, since they were planted--and the two abused trees along the side of the Irv Schroeder & Sons building and another near Cherry Alley are also blooming. That's surely cause for celebration.

Author's Note: At one time I knew the names of the two species of tree planted along Second Street, but I don't anymore. I called them tree lilacs because their blossoms resemble lilac blossoms. If someone could enlighten me--and everyone else who reads this blog--by identifying the species, I would be most grateful.

The Shifting Sands of Assessments

The grievance process is on hiatus until June 2, but news is starting to leak out about assessment adjustments that have been made by the assessor and the Board of Assessment Review. Last Sunday, when Gossips published its feature The Million-Dollar Houses of Hudson, Sam Pratt reported in a comment that City Assessor Garth Slocum had already agreed to reduce the assessment on at least one of those properties to somewhere between $800,000 and $850,000 and word has it that Eric Galloway's attorney succeeded in getting the assessment on 345 Allen Street down to $800,000. Since assessments presumably reflect market value, and there should be, therefore, some relationship among the assessments of houses located in the same neighborhood, how does a 20 percent reduction in the assessment of one house impact the assessments of the other houses on the block? Do their assessments get reduced by 20 percent, too?

Consider these scenarios. House A sold within the past two years, and its selling price--its full market value--was used to justify raising the full market value and the assessments on other nearby houses. The owner of one of those houses--House B--presents her case to the assessor, based on square footage and comparable condition, and succeeds in getting the assessment on her house reduced. Then the owner of House A goes to the BAR and gets the assessment on his house--for whatever reason--reduced. House A, which the owner of House B argued was bigger and better than hers therefore worth more, suddenly has an adjusted assessment that is not significantly different from the adjusted assessment for House B.

House C and House D are nearly identical in location, square footage, and condition. The owner of House C considers her assessment fair and does not grieve. The owner of House D does grieve and gets his assessment lowered by 40 percent.

The owner of House E uses Houses F and G as comparables to get his assessment reduced by 30 percent. Meanwhile, the owner of House G gets her assessment reduced by 20 percent, making her adjusted assessment lower than the adjusted assessment for House E.

It's been suggested that assessment adjustments be published as they are made. Difficult as it may seem to implement (and potentially even more chaotic for property owners trying to monitor them on grievance day), it does seem that greater transparency about what is happening between the tentative roll and the final roll is necessary if Hudson is to achieve the goal of fair assessments for all.

The Credibility of Marco Marzocchi

Marco Marzocchi, attorney and pitchman for Widewaters, keeps losing credibility. Remember back in January when he told the Economic Development and Tourism Committee of the Board of Supervisors that T.J. Maxx wouldn't even consider locating in Greenport if there wasn't going to be a Kohl's store? He also said that without a twenty-year PILOT there would be no Kohl's and T.J. Maxx would demand the same deal.

Well, the IDA rejected a twenty-year PILOT for Kohl's and a fifteen-year PILOT, but, even though it's still not clear if Kohl's will build a store in Greenport or not, T.J. Maxx has broken ground for its new store. Amazing.

You can read all about it on ccSCOOP.