Some new homes for Venus

In a post on his blog on Monday, and to the consternation of many local residents, John Isaacs argued against a literal restoration of Hudson's Seventh Street Park. He suggested that the beloved Venus statue, which used to live at the park's center, be sited on an existing triangular traffic island at the nearby intersection of State, Greene, and Columbia Streets. I'm not sure he was entirely serious in making this suggestion, as the traffic island is meager, to be kind. But as I recently suggested a larger plaza at this very location, I thought I would take another look at this area as well as another possibility that has been on my mind for some time.

First of all, here's my recent idea for the enlarged plaza. It resulted from closing off a portion Columbia Street currently used for eastbound traffic and extending the small triangular island southward (more details here). At the time, I wasn't thinking of the plaza as a location for Venus, but perhaps enlarged it has a chance of working. (The island is currently the home of an Olympic monument; I don't know where this would go.) 

Independently of this, I've been wanting to look into expanding the St. Charles Hotel as a way of improving the approach into the city from Green Street. Hotels can work well with front doors on more than one side, so the St. Charles could could present fronts to both the 7th Street Park and Green Street. The scheme below suggests a new hotel wing (perhaps containing function rooms) and atrium fronting on the park. (Horror of horrors: I've removed three existing undistinguished buildings to accommodate the hotel expansion.) The atrium also gathers in the view corridor from Green Street. I trust that one can look past the simplicity of the drawings to imagine what could be:

With the hotel having a stronger presence on the 7th Street Park, another potential location for Venus is suggested: on the park, but shifted to lie on axis with the hotel entrance. This would get the park plan away from its historical symmetry, which does not work well given the train line that slices through it, as well as some other factors:

You can click on the images for a closer look, but don't take my park design too literally as it calls for a more nuanced analysis than I can provide here. I'll try to take a closer look at it soon.

I'd like an 11.4% refund, please.

Last night, I counted thirteen missing channels between Channels 2 and 76. That means we're getting sixty-two of the seventy-plus channels we're paying for.

EDIT, 12:40PM: Hmmm, I apparently ignored a notice from MHC that I was to request they send me a digital converter box. Given that I have a reasonably new television, I thought I didn't need one. So my bad. Then again, if MHC knows its customers need a converter box to use get full use of the service they are paying for, why doesn't MHC simply deliver them without our having to make an official request?

Four books for the Hudson Urbanist

How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Stewart Brand. A completed building is really just a best guess by its designer as to what it needs to be. It is afterward, as a building is altered by its users, that it achieves its more significant reality. By the author of The Whole Earth Catalog.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Anyone interested in understanding how cities work in everyday life should start here. Written by a Greenwich Village mother who used tools no more sophisticated than her eye and ear, the book turned the urban planning establishment upside down when it appeared in 1961. Widely regarded as the twentieth century's most important book on urbanism, it has never been out of print. 

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander et al. The authors explicate 253 "patterns" that can make our designed world work better, from the daylighting of rooms to the dimensions of porches to the arrangement of city blocks.

City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village by David Sucher. An unpretentious, extensively illustrated book with a kitchen sink of small ideas on improving urban places. Some of the ideas could have used an editor (the book is self-published), but it's nonetheless worth looking into, especially for novices and nonprofessionals.

I've linked the titles above to Amazon so you can learn more about the books, but please buy them locally if at all possible.

The New NIMBYism

There is much that could be written about last week's denial by the Hudson Historic Preservation Commission of a petition to add a modest retail storefront to 134-136 Warren Street. I'm sure I will have more to say about it, or about the next mind-boggling decision by the HPC, as I continue to get my blogging feet under me. For now, I will wonder aloud about three things:

1. Does the HPC not recognize that the success and enjoyability of Warren Street today is a direct result of this very sort of alteration to countless other buildings on it? Its decision is tantamount to a declaration that Warren Street would be a better street if all the open storefronts were removed and replaced by double hung residential windows.
2. Does the HPC realize how selective its view of history is? Very few, if any, people in 1790 or 1842 or 1911 would have objected to the owner of this or a similar building replacing two ground floor residential windows with a retail storefront. Such alteration was understood as an improvement to the building, street, and city: a local businessperson or family would get to make a living in the building and neighbors would get to shop locally for needed goods or services. So what gives, HPC? If you so revere our heritage, why do you honor only the physical artifacts of that heritage? Why do you not honor historical processes?
3. Does the HPC grasp that anything it does to make retail more difficult in Hudson makes it incrementally more necessary for Hudson residents to traipse out to the Fairview Avenue strip for goods and services? Does it not recognize that anti-retail policies, far from safeguarding the urban condition, promote suburban sprawl? 

Historic preservationists did much in the past to save our urban centers. Sadly, they are now one of the primary obstacles to successful urbanism.

900 Columbia Street: not necessarily a loss (redux)

The other day, I proposed a traffic circle at the Prospect Ave./Columbia Street/Columbia Turnpike intersection. Afterward, I recalled another scheme I created last year for the same intersection. I'm surprised I forgot about it, as it was more directly stimulated by the proposed demolition of 900 Columbia Street. The scheme would eliminate thru-travel on a portion of Columbia Street and route all traffic through a conventional four-way intersection. It would look like this: 

The genesis of the scheme was an statement by the owners of 900 Columbia Street that they would create a garden in lieu of the building they were tearing down. The implication was of a public amenity, presumably of greater value than a generically shrubbed parking lot buffer. At the time, I thought, why not ask the owners to put their money where their bulldozers were by asking them to endow a larger public garden in an extended front yard? Politically speaking, this might have been an attractive trade-off for the tortured debate on the building's demolition. Here is the scheme with the garden:

None of this is to say the scheme wouldn't be viable today. I think I forgot about it because I usually don't like to interrupt through streets, particularly in urban districts where street identities are already compromised. But I think I find this scheme superior to the traffic circle scheme, in regard to traffic management as well as pedestrian environment. It's also likely it would require less extensive alterations to the surrounding infrastructure.

A quarter-mile to the west, Columbia Street was recently rerouted in a similar fashion where it meets Green Street:

Westbound thru-traffic, which used to follow a straight path from right to left in the photo, is now diverted around a small triangular island. Eastbound traffic, however, maintains its previous thru-route. What would happen if we also rerouted the eastbound traffic? 

We'd again end up with a simplified, seemingly more manageable four-way intersection. Additionally, the triangular island, which is currently too small to attract users or dignify the memorial now sited on it, could be extended southward to create a plaza that engages the existing buildings on that edge.

Some planters, benches, and other improvements suggest a quite palatable urban space. With the (admittedly glib) replacement of the gas station on the west corner, the intersection might become a place to enjoy, rather than simply get through. Notice that the Hudson City Center (the large brick building at the top of the photo), which now seems alien to its site and to Hudson, looks much more anchored in space. And considered in context with the above suggested improvements at Columbia Turnpike and the proposed revamping of the Seventh Street Park a block to the west, one can imagine a rather pleasant progression down Columbia Street into the city grid, wending through a series of thoughtfully considered public spaces.

Betsy finds a happy home... the hard way

My girlfriend found a lovely abandoned kitten while running on Mt. Merino Road in Greenport last week. It clearly had gone a long time without eating, and was quite terrified. We took her home, fed her copious amounts of food, and took her to Animalkind on Warren Street the next morning. She was identified by microchip as "Betsy," and had been adopted from Animalkind not long before by a woman living on Front Street in Hudson.

We wondered about the likelihood of a three-month old kitten wandering more than a mile through challenging terrain to an elevated Mt. Merino Road. Did her owner drive her there and abandon her? Our alarm increased when we learned the owner had taken in several other pets from Animalkind. 

I headed back to the area the next day. My heart sank when I found a dead calico at the foot of Mt. Merino Road on Route 9G. It had been struck by a car within the past day. Among the cats adopted by Betsy's former owner was a similar calico. Animalkind went to the site to verify the identity of the dead cat by microchip, but by the time they got there it had been scooped up and disposed of by the highway department.

So far, efforts to verify the safety of the Front Street woman's other pets have been unsuccessful. The good news is that Betsy has been readopted into a stable new home, where she is enjoying her time with another recently found kitten.

900 Columbia Street: not necessarily a loss

 The worst intersection in Hudson is at the meeting of Columbia Street, Columbia Turnpike, and Prospect Street at the eastern end of the city, between Columbia Memorial Hospital and the cemetery. An agglomeration of acute and obtuse angles, grade changes, curves, and not-fully-expected stop signs contribute to a situation that one cannot negotiate logically or intuitively. I typically traverse the intersection in mild terror and complete it in amazement of not needing to detour into the hospital.
The intersection as it exists is shown below. I fudged the building at 900 Columbia Street, which used to abut the sidewalk but was torn down last year. I've simply slid it back on the site to approximate the new building that now sits there.

Existing intersection

While many were lamenting the demolition of 900 Columbia Street last year, I wondered if it presented an opportunity to more favorably configure the intersection. While the basic street geometries can't be changed, perhaps, I thought, the removal of 900 Columbia would allow a traffic circle to organize the mess. I'm not generally a fan of traffic circles, but they are effective at taming complicated street geometries. And statistically they are the safest type of intersection by a wide margin: accidents are almost never bad, because everyone is moving in the same direction and contact tends to be low-speed and glancing. Compare that to the current intersection, where an easily missed stop sign can result in a driver getting T-boned by a car traveling at full speed.
Another problem is that the intersection makes for a terrible entry into the city when approaching from the east. The hilly topography combines with the weird street angles to give one a sense of sliding away or being deflected from his desired path. And the hospital, a very large building compared to those that precede it, lacks a dignified presence. (The hospital does not have a proper presence on any of the streets on which it fronts, a topic for another time.)
Below is the intersection with a traffic circle overlaid. My dimensions are crude, but it turns out that I didn't need to use the front yard of 900 Columbia. In fact, I kept the whole northern edge of Columbia Street intact. If a larger circle (ellipse?) is needed, space perhaps can be taken to the east, where the existing house has gained a much larger front yard, and to the southwest, where the existing hospital parking lot is inefficiently configured.

Intersection with suggested traffic circle

The hilly topography is a concern, as a traffic circle needs to be level. Some significant regrading would be required, particularly at the south and east, where Prospect Avenue and Columbia Turnpike terminate. These roadways would have to be lowered, which would result in a steeper hillside at the edge of the cemetery.

Another concern is that traffic circles often are ugly. But when thoughtfully landscaped, they can be a community amenity that imparts not only safety, but a pleasing welcome for drivers and pedestrians. The one shown here isn't the most stunning example, but you get the idea.

Planting by Shippan Point Garden Club, Stamford CT

If I were to sermonize briefly here, I would question the zero-sum view that historic preservationists too often take toward buildings and cities. In fighting the loss of old buildings, they often fail to engage the city as the creative enterprise it actually is. Their focus is on what might be lost, not on what might be gained. Of course, we didn't need to tear down the old building at 900 Columbia Street to consider improving the intersection on which it fronts. But the possibility (and ultimately the reality) of its loss is in fact what sparked the "what if...?" exploration here. To the rearward-facing historic preservationist, such exploration is not undertaken because a loss is unavoidably a loss. But to the creative person, losses are opportunities. 

Educated in a small town

When I took a break from blogging in early 2011, I didn't expect it to be for three or more years. Then again, I didn't foresee the reason for the hiatus: the startling and repeated nastiness I encountered in my first few months in Hudson. Had the bad behaviors come from random individuals on the street, I might have more easily moved on. But all of the actors, save one, hold or have held public office in Hudson; and the exception among them has been as prominent here as any of the others have been over the past decade.

I have felt great shame for these individuals and for Hudson ever since. This is not an attitude I wanted to bring to this blog or carry with me when I walk down Warren Street. But the question of whether this little city is in some way poisoned nonetheless faces me daily. (I continue to live in Hudson.) I realize that this question is in many ways unfair, because I also have met many good, open-minded people here. But it does seem that public dialogue here is distorted by a handful of relatively privileged individuals with a very narrow view of cities, society, and Hudson. And they have little compunction about discrediting, misleading, insulting, shouting down, ignoring, fabricating conflicts with, or—I kid you not—making public faces of disgust at those with whom they disagree.

The mistake I have made in response has been to try to rationally address these behaviors. Indeed, I have started this blog post many times over the past three years, each time leading with an effort to explain and address the foolishness that went on. But, I have realized, publicly calling out people on their manipulations and temper tantrums, no matter how egregious, tends to bring one down to the level of the offenders.

And so without further explication (until, perhaps, the guilty parties next run for office), I hereby restart this blog. Its focus will be somewhat more expansive than before, as in addition to opining on Hudson urbanism, I will explore other cities and towns in the Hudson Valley—and, at times, beyond. Indeed, the world is larger than Hudson.