Spotted While Ogling Oriels

While looking for oriels in the 800 block yesterday, I noticed this sign at the entrance to the parking lot next to Wasabi. While restaurant patrons may at times be required to be patient, they are not usually thought of as patients. 

Ear to the Ground

There's a rumor making the rounds, which isn't actually a rumor at all, that there is interest in using the former Kaz warehouse at Cross Street and Tanners Lane--just down the hill from Allen Street--to manufacture the plastic netting used for snow fences. While it is true that a company interested in doing this made a presentation to the board of the Hudson Development Corporation (HDC), which now owns the old Kaz warehouse, Gossips' sources say that the HDC board told the company that the zoning in the LWRP, which designates this area as R-S-C (residential special commercial), does not permit this use of the building. Let's hope that's the end of it. 

Parking Tonight

If you're wondering on which side of the street to park your car tonight, the answer is . . .  whichever side you want. 

Although the summer suspension of alternate side of the street parking requires that you revert back to the regular rules on Sunday night, Memorial Day is one of the eight holidays on which alternate side of the street parking is suspended. The Police Commissioner's order, provided to Gossips by Common Council president Don Moore, states the following: 

Alternate Side of the Street Parking will be suspended on the eve of the Following listed Federal Holidays and there will be no enforcement on same. . . .

1. NEW YEAR'S DAY
2. PRESIDENTS' DAY
3. MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY
4. MEMORIAL DAY
5. INDEPENDENCE DAY
6. LABOR DAY
7. THANKSGIVING DAY
8. CHRISTMAS DAY

Jane's Walk: Site 27

Today we wind up our oriel ogling by looking at the oriels in the last three blocks of Warren Street. The search for oriels is not as rewarding here as it was in the 400 block or the 500 block. In the last three blocks combined, there are a total of only nine oriels. In the 600 block, remarkably, there is only one: this one at 610 Warren Street.

610 Warren Street

The 800 block similarly has very few oriels--only two--and both of them have been nearly obliterated by alterations to the buildings.

807 Warren Street

833 Warren Street

With the exception of the oriel at 744 Warren Street, made indistinct by the application of vinyl siding, the best oriels by far in this upper stretch of Warren Street are found in the 700 block. Worthy of notice are the oriel at 715 Warren Street, which like the house to which it is attached looks amazingly like the residence of the crooked man of nursery rhyme fame, and the one at 721 Warren Street, where huge panes of plate glass make the oriel seem more like two stacked display cases.  

715 Warren Street

721 Warren Street

723 Warren Street

744 Warren Street

The oriels at 746 and 748 Warren Street make a fitting conclusion to our oriel tour. We started out by defining the difference between a bay and an oriel, using the mnemonic provided by Christopher Gray in the New York Times: "Does it rest on its bottom? Then that's B, for bay. Or, does it stick out from a higher floor on the facade with nothing under it? That's O for oriel, with zero underneath." At 748 Warren Street, there is both an oriel (at the right) and a bay (at the left) in a single facade.

746 and 748 Warren Street

   

Preservation Pioneer

Everett Ortner, who with his wife, Evelyn, was an early leader in the movement to restore 19th-century brownstones in Brooklyn, the founder of the Brownstone Revival Coalition, and the driving force behind the Park Slope Historic District, died this past week, at the age of 92. His obituary appeared yesterday in the New York Times.   

Decoration Day

Waterloo 1868

In May 1866, a year and a month after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, a pharmacist named Henry Welles organized the first "Decoration Day" in his village of Waterloo, in Seneca County, to honor soldiers from New York who had died in the Civil War. On that day, the graves of Union soldiers were decorated with flowers, patriotic bunting was draped on buildings, and veterans of the Union Army paraded down the main street of Waterloo.  

By 1890, all of the northern states had made Decoration Day an official state holiday, celebrated on May 30--a date chosen because it was not the anniversary of any battle. Decoration Day evolved to honor not just the Civil War dead but all who died in war. After World War II, people started calling the holiday Memorial Day instead of Decoration Day, but the name was not officially changed until 1967. In 1968, the Uniform Holidays Bill moved Memorial Day from May 30 to the last Monday in May.

Decoration Day Parade, Chicago 1912

From the beginning, parades have been a traditional part of observing Memorial Day, and tomorrow the tradition continues in Hudson. Following a commemoration at the war memorial in Seventh Street Park at 10:15 a.m., the parade proceeds down Warren Street to Fourth Street, then turns and heads for the courthouse where the Memorial Day service takes place. Following the service, there's a reception at American Legion Post 187 at 7 Fairview Avenue. 

Jane's Walk: Site 26

It was ten years ago today--May 26, 2002--that Cassandra Danz, a.k.a. Mrs Greenthumbs, died of breast cancer at the age of 55. Gossips pays tribute to Cassandra by making her house--611 Union Street--our "Jane's Walk" site for today. 

Cassandra and her husband, Walter Brett, bought this 1851 Hudson River Gothic cottage in 1984 for $30,000 and proceeded to turn it into a showplace. Legend has it that, in purchasing the house, they were in a struggle with the Elks, then headquartered in the Richard Upjohn designed Terry-Gillette Mansion at 601 Union. The Elks, it seems, wanted to buy the house and demolish it for a parking lot. Fortunately, that didn't happen, and Hudson is richer for it. 

Cassandra and Walter meticulously restored the house, which, when they started, probably was the "falling down wreck" the Elks said it was. Once the house was stabilized, Cassandra focused on the garden. The subtitle of her first gardening book says it all: Mrs. Greenthumbs: How I Turned a Boring Yard into a Glorious Garden and How You Can, Too. Here's a passage from that book about the house and garden's beginnings: 

When we bought the place in 1984, it had been neglected by the previous owner since the 1960s, when his eyesight, health, and joie de vivre failed him. He was a retired New York City policeman and practicing eccentric, who left the house only to attend to his pigeons and chickens, which he kept cooped up in the backyard. He was known as the nice old man in the haunted house by the local kids and as a kook by everybody else. In a way, I'm grateful to him for not taking care of the yard or the house. If he had been more conscientious about the house, he might have modernized it and torn out all the Gothic detail; and if he had been more conscientious about the garden, he might have mowed everything down so it would look "neat."      

Cassandra gained fame as Mrs. Greenthumbs, a character she created in 1991 for a one-woman show presented at the Ancram Opera House. As Mrs. Greenthumbs, she had a radio show on the local station here in Hudson and eventually moved to national TV as a regular on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. Her first gardening book was published in 1993, and a second, Mrs. Greenthumbs Plows Ahead, came out in 1999.

Mrs. Greenthumbs and her garden were frequently featured in magazines. These pages are reproduced from an article called "A Visit with Mrs. Greenthumbs," which appeared in the Winter 1995 issue of Country Living Gardener.

Cassandra's impact on historic preservation in Hudson went beyond restoring her own house and creating a cottage garden that gladdened the hearts of all who passed by. When the Gothic Revival house just to the east was severely damaged by fire in 1994 and there was talk of rebuilding it using prefabricated parts, as had been done the year before to a Queen Anne house on Green Street, Cassandra interceded and put the owner in touch with a contractor who helped rebuild the house properly, making it actually better, historically speaking, than it was before the fire.   

In her first book, Mrs. Greenthumbs, Cassandra said this of gardening and of her career as Mrs. Greenthumbs:  

There aren't many people who have the good fortune to make their hobby into their profession. I am one of that fortunate few. I have lived many hours of my life in a garden, and that's about as close to Eden as I am ever going to get.

More About the B&B Reclassification

Tom Casey's report on the reclassification of Hudson B&Bs, with quotes from GAR Associates vice president Cindy Baire and David Brown, one of the B&B owners affected by the change, appears in today's Register-Star: "Classification Warfare."  

Jane's Walk: Site 25

Once upon a time, these five sister houses on the north side of the 600 block of Columbia Street all belonged to Elihu Gifford.

Elihu Gifford, who had come to Hudson in 1823, was the owner of the Gifford Foundry, just up the street. In his day, he was one of the richest, most influential men in Hudson. (It was because of Elihu and his foundry that we have railroad tracks running through Seventh Street Park. They led straight from the waterfront to the Gifford Foundry.) 

Elihu and his wife, Eliza Starbuck, lived in this house across the street from the five houses, where there is now a municipal parking lot. In this house, they raised their eleven children--six sons and five daughters.

The five houses were built for five of the six Gifford sons. The corner house was deemed most prestigious and went to the eldest son. Presumably the other houses were assigned to the sons in birth order, from west to east. (Hudson River School painter Sanford Robinson Gifford was the only son who was left out of the plan. The belvedere on Elihu and Eliza's house, however, was built to be Sanford's studio when he was in Hudson.) When the elder Giffords lived on the south side of the street and their male heirs on the north side, this section of Columbia Street became known as Gifford Place.

The Elihu Gifford house was demolished in 1965--the same year that Olana became a National Historic Landmark.

This Morning at the HPC

Although several people turned up this morning with the expectation that something more would happen, the Historic Preservation Commission stuck to its plan to accept applications at the first meeting of the month and vote on accepted applications at the second meeting.

This morning the HPC voted on four applications that had come before them on May 11. They granted certificates of appropriateness to the construction of a porch to be used as an outdoor seating area at 347 Warren Street, to the proposed alterations to 13 South Third Street, and to the proposal to move 900 Columbia Street to 215-219 Union Street. (Rick Scalera, special adviser to the Galvan Foundation, which is proposing to move the building to save it from being demolished, told someone seated near him in the audience, who in turn told Gossips, that the house would probably be demolished anyway because moving it would turn out to be too expensive.) The HPC denied a certificate of appropriateness to the proposal to move the Robert Taylor House, at the head of Tanners Lane, to 23 Union Street. The denial was based on the fact that the application submitted had been incomplete. 

Having done that in the space of about ten minutes, the HPC went into executive session. Cheryl Roberts, counsel to the HPC, explained the justification for the executive session, which lasted for more than an hour, was "attorney-client privilege." 

Good to Go

The environmental report on 25 Railroad Avenue commissioned by the United Public Service Employees Union indicates that "no immediate or existing threat to human health exists under the current site conditions." The County can now move ahead with its plans to purchase the building for $1.288 million. Nathan Mayberg has the story in today's Register-Star: "Union: No health threat at DSS."   

Jane's Walk: Site 24

We'll linger on the 500 block of Warren Street to ogle the oriels. Of all the blocks of Warren Street, the 500 block has the greatest number of oriels, besting the 400 block, which has thirteen, by two. By far the most impressive are the oriels on this row of four identical houses—512, 514, 516, and 518--built in 1882.

Taken on its own, each house, with its amazing half-circle, two-story oriel, is stunning, but the effect of the four of them together, lined up in a row, is nothing less than spectacular. This early photograph of one of the houses inspires longing for the return of the awning as a means of keeping a house cool in summer.

In the case of these four houses, constructed in 1882, the oriels are part of the original design, but there are many examples on the 500 block of oriels that were added to existing buildings. The oriels on 502 and 504 Warren Street are examples of oriels added to a building that clearly predates the era when oriels were all the rage in Hudson.   

Take a look at the rest of the oriels in the 500 block and, in each case, decide for yourself if the oriel is an original feature of the building or if it was added as part of a "Victorianization" of the building.

508 Warren Street

517 Warren Street

522 Warren Street

523 Warren Street

525 Warren Street

536 Warren Street

543 Warren Street

545 Warren Street

553 Warren Street

  


  

The Care and Keeping of Entrepreneurialism

Small and home-based businesses were on the agenda at Wednesday night's Common Council Legal Committee meeting. Committee chair John Friedman (Third Ward) introduced the topic by reminding the committee that Hudson, with a self-employment rate of 9.96 percent, is the greatest center of entrepreneurship in the entire state. He wanted the committee to look for ways to protect home-based and small businesses and suggested strengthening the language in the city code and introducing a "more expansive definition of customary home occupations."

Inevitably the discussion came around to the situation that inspired it in the first place: GAR's blanket reclassification of B&Bs as commercial instead of residential properties. City attorney Cheryl Roberts reported, based on her conversations with ORPTS (Office of Real Property Tax Services), that the reclassification has "not much significance at all." Since Hudson is a "non-homestead community," the tax rate for commercial property is no different from the tax rate for residential property. The only difference, it seems, is how the value of a property is determined. The recent sale of comparable properties is the basis for assessing residential properties, whereas the income produced in a building is factored in for commercial properties. Roberts stressed that ORPTS classifications have nothing to do with zoning classifications, so being reclassified commercial for assessment purposes does not mean a B&B cannot operate in a section of the city zoned residential. 

"So far as I can tell," said Roberts, speaking of GAR Associates' and city assessor Garth Slocum's reclassification of the B&Bs, "they did what they were supposed to do," expressing the opinion that the B&Bs had been improperly classified in the past. According to Roberts, it would be unethical for GAR to reclassify the B&Bs now, since only factual errors can be corrected after grievance day. Friedman argued that the B&B owners had not been given "effective notice" of the reclassification and did not know they needed to go to the assessor to protest the reclassification until it was too late to do so. 

Council President Don Moore expressed his "general sense of outrage" about the situation. He talked about the B&Bs as businesses that had been operating on a "relatively settled set of assumptions," then stated that he was personally invested in wanting "this assessment to be perceived to be as fair as possible," and concluded, with frustration, "and to have this monkey wrench thrown into this." He shared his opinion that "we should get rid of the assessor." 

Linda Mussmann, speaking from the audience, wanted to know how many people were impacted by the reclassification. Friedman indicated it was six, to which Mussmann responded, "So, six people are in a bad mood. Are you asking for someone's head over six people?" Friedman responded that it was not just six people, but it was six businesses that are "fundamentally important to Hudson." He cited the importance of the lodging provided by the B&Bs to the success of the restaurants, shops, and cultural venues in Hudson, suggesting that people who stayed in the B&Bs probably also found their way to TSL, Mussmann's not-for-profit theater. 

Friedman concluded that a B&B is a "special animal" that deserves special treatment and special protection. Although committee member Cappy Pierro (Fifth Ward) disagreed, Friedman went on to say, "We're not making up the definition of B&B. We have to think about how we encourage them without putting them at a great advantage or disadvantage." 

There's Many a Slip . . .

With a $10 million renovation proposed for the Columbia County courthouse, including handicapped access ramps along the front of the building, many are concerned about the impact of the new construction on the architectural integrity of the Warren and Wetmore building. Now it seems the Public Works Committee of the Board of Supervisors is niggling about hiring Lothrop Associates, the architects who designed the renovations, to oversee carrying out the project. Nathan Mayberg has the story in today's Register-Star: "Second Lothrop contract considered."      
 

Venus Rising Again

At Wednesday night's meeting of the Common Council Public Works Committee, DPW Superintendent Rob Perry reported on the possibility of restoring Venus and the fountain in Seventh Street Park. Tom Casey has the story in today's Register-Star: "Is there hope that Venus will return to fountain?" There seems to be some thought that Venus might be restored to the fountain without reproducing the pedestal on which the statue originally stood, but that seems unimaginable.
 

How City Hall Works . . . or Doesn't

On his blog, Sam Pratt recounts his experiences trying to obtain documents relevant to understanding how all the B&Bs got reclassified without anyone in government knowing about it: "FOILed."

Jane's Walk: Site 23

The bank buildings in the 500 block of Warren Street deserve our attention. There are four of them, although only one is still used as a bank. The first one encountered as you move upstreet is 520 Warren Street. This late 19th century building started out as the National Commercial Bank & Trust Company. Since 1962, it has been Hudson's City Hall.

The next bank building you come to as you move east on Warren Street is this one at 544 Warren.

This is the newest of the bank buildings on this stretch of Warren Street. Designed by Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon, the architectural firm best known for designing the Empire State Building, it was constructed in 1927 for Farmers' National Bank and replaced this elaborate Victorian building, which burned to the ground in a spectacular fire in November 1926.

The next bank building, at 560 Warren Street, is the second building in Hudson designed by the architects Warren and Wetmore, the first being the Columbia County Courthouse. It was built shortly after the courthouse was completed in 1908 for the Hudson City Savings Institution.

In this case, the new bank was not built as the consequence of a fire. Rather the prosperous financial institution was moving upstreet to a new, more impressive building from its previous building at 230 Warren Street, now the location of Cafe Le Perche.    

The Hudson City Savings Institution was founded in 1850. An interesting footnote to its founding is that the eighth account established at the new bank belonged to Mrs. Mary M. Bliss. This is noteworthy because it was only two years earlier, in 1848, that it became legal for women to own property and to possess money. 

The bank was first located in the insurance office of Josiah Fairfield at 234 Warren Street. It moved to 230 Warren Street in 1866, after purchasing the building from Dr. Oliver Bronson for $4,000. Around 1910, the bank moved to its new Warren and Wetmore building at 560 Warren Street and remained there until the early 1990s, when it moved to Hudson City Centre at Green and State streets. A few years after that, it changed its name to Hudson River Bank & Trust, and a few years after that, it was sold to First Niagara Financial Group.

The First National Bank of Hudson, founded in 1864, started out at 327 Warren Street, now the Hudson Opera House. It moved to this building at 561 Warren Street, directly across the street from the Hudson City Savings Institution, probably in the 1920s. 

This bank was the target of the elaborately planned and disastrously executed heist in the 1959 film Odds Against Tomorrow. The plot of the film required a bank with a side entrance. The story goes that scouts were sent out to look for such a bank and found it here in Hudson, which is why the greater part of the movie was filmed in Hudson. This picture of the bank is a still from the movie.

Basilica Hudson Schedules June Screenings

Basilica Hudson has announced its schedule of June film screenings. The list includes some classics, some experimental films, some short films, and guest curated programs. Here's what will be shown:

• Thursday, May 31: The Wild Child, Francois Truffaut, 1970
• Friday, June 8: Balloon Land: Thinner than Air, curated by Jake Perlin—The Black Balloon, Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie, 2011; The Red Balloon, Albert Lamorisse, 1956; The Balloonatic, Buster Keaton, 1923
• Thursday, June 14: Promised Lands, Susan Sontag, 1974
• Thursday, June 21: Be Like an Ant + Shorts, with Mike Plante—Weird Carolers, Brent Green, 2009; A Ship Runs Aground, Jason Byrne, 2009; Be Like an Ant, Mike Plante, 2012 

Screenings begin at 8 p.m. See the Basilica Hudson website for more information about the films.      

The Offense of the Fence

The fence around the vacant lot at the corner of Fifth and Warren has been up for a few weeks. It rarely goes unnoticed or uncommented upon, and most people seem to find it offensive. 
 

The question persists how this fence got erected without going before the Historic Preservation Commission for a certificate of appropriateness. A building permit was issued for the fence, so it's clear that the Code Enforcement Office knew about it, but why didn't it come before the HPC? 

The HPC meets again this Friday morning at 10 a.m. Perhaps someone will ask Code Enforcement Officer Peter Wurster to explain why the fence did not get referred to the HPC.  

Jane's Walk: Site 22

In the latter part of the 19th century, this shop--535 Warren Street--was Hannah's Jewelry Store. It was the first shop in Hudson to display and sell Hudson River School paintings.

Wallace W. Hannah, the owner of the jewelry store, was a financial supporter of Henry Ary. He lived in the Italian villa at 39 South Fifth Street. The house had been built sometime between 1845 and 1850, and Hannah purchased it in the 1870s. 

Hannah built several of the houses along the curve of South Fifth Street and on East Allen Street and is credited with developing this part of Hudson.