Hudson's heritage remains safe

Mr. Forsdick mislabeled his otherwise handsomely Photoshopped
images. The existing house is actually the one on the right.

An unpublicized project came before Hudson's Historic Preservation Commission last Friday morning. The owner of a house at 76 North Fifth Street, Fenton Forsdick, gave a rambling, heavily accented presentation that left commissioners confused and agitated. Near as they could tell, the petitioner wanted the commission's blessing to remove a window from his front facade. This would allow him to create a walk-in closet behind the newly blank wall; presumably, as is the case for many houses of the era, existing storage space is inadequate.

The HPC quickly and unanimously voted down the petition, and vented its considerable indignation. "Our heritage is at stake," sniffed one commissioner, summarizing the views of her peers. "This is an historic facade. To disrupt the three-rank rhythm would present a threat to the very foundation of our society."

"The mere suggestion of altering this facade in this manner has made me queasy," said another commissioner. "Although it could be the German breakfast quesadilla I had at Bob's," he added before excusing himself from the proceedings.

A tumultuous, forty-five minute argument ensued between the remaining commissioners and the petitioner. It quieted down only upon the petitioner's realization that he had inadvertently reversed his existing and proposed images. The picture he had labeled "existing" was in fact the "proposed" version of the house, and vice versa. Mr. Forsdick apologized sheepishly and profusely to the panel. What he really wanted, he explained in halting English to a now silent audience, was to install a new window above his front porch where there currently is a blank wall, in order to create a more balanced facade and introduce natural light into his dressing room.

With the new information in hand, the Commission voted a second time against the petition. "This is an historic facade," explained a commissioner. "To disrupt it would threaten the very foundation of our society." "Our heritage is at stake," reminded a second commission member. The missing HPC member returned to the room in a state of visceral upset. "I have read that this kind of thing can lead to the mutilation of babies," he added.

A mild but distinct scent, similar to that of a fresh lilac bloom onto which a domestic shorthair has dropped a major dookie, wafted through the chamber, and the meeting was adjourned.

When urbanism went wrong

I wrote the following essay on Hudson for Architect magazine in September 2009. At the time, I didn't realize the extent to which those living on Hudson's economic fringes reside north of Warren Street. I also missed on my population estimate. The larger lesson of the essay holds. Also, space limitations prevented me from expounding on ways to close America's economic disparity. My approach to urban economic development is described in modest detail HERE.

Firefighters parade through Hudson, N.Y.
Macduff Everton/Corbis via Architect magazine

I love big cities, but I often find small cities more compelling. The dispiriting and encouraging aspects of urbanism are more immediately juxtaposed, often heart-rendingly so, but the disparity between them seems bridgeable. Surely, this place can be made to work, if only.

Hudson, N.Y., a settlement of 8,000 residents two hours north of Manhattan, is a two-square-mile snapshot of America’s urban disparity. Its main avenue, Warren Street, is a stunner; it looks as if eight very charming blocks of Brooklyn left the big city a century ago and moved to Columbia County. It has its rough spots, but Warren Street has been experiencing a revival, thanks to gentrification, historic preservation, an influx of antique dealers and tourists, and the helping hand of government.

In the blocks immediately to either side of Warren Street, one finds the other Hudson: comparatively poor, nonwhite, disconnected, and underemployed. The crime rate is higher, and the rough spots in the urban fabric are rougher. The industrial base is nearly gone, as are innumerable mom-and-pop shoe stores, food marts, and repair services that once made Hudson, Hudson.
 
What has happened in Hudson, as elsewhere, is that the middle has dropped out. But before blaming its vanishing middle class on the global economy, look closer to home. In fact, look in the home, for this is where American businesses—and American urbanism—used to get started. Before we became enamored of top-down urbanism—funded by government, propped up by feasibility studies, packaged by city hall, guarded by aesthetic review boards, and delivered by developers—urbanism arose through an organic process of small entrepreneurs opening home-based businesses to the sidewalk. Their one-of-a-kind shops and industries were the starting point for innumerable mixed-use streets, districts, and downtowns that we love today. Read more...

History is a guide, not a master

    Proposal by Cathryn Dwyre and Hudson Development Corp.

The proposal to revamp the Seventh Street Park has produced a predictable polarization in Hudson. On one side are those desiring a full, historically accurate restoration and on the other are the supporters of a more contemporary design—either the current proposal or some other.

Responsibility for this polarization lies at the feet of both camps. The contemporists have not done enough homework or engaged the design process publicly enough to justify the sweeping changes put forth by designer Cathryn Dwyre. And many preservationists have insisted on a full and literal restoration of the original park plan without considering the possibility that there might be a better way. I will focus in this post on one particular set of flaws in the original park layout; in the coming weeks I hope to explore other issues related to the past, current, and future design of the park.

View of original Seventh Street Park looking northeast.
The park was organized by two orthogonal pathways with
a fountain located symmetrically at their intersection.

At her recent public presentation, Ms. Dwyre described the original layout of the park as a "default" nineteenth century solution. While perhaps taken by preservationists as a backhanded slap, her statement is not inaccurate. The park's configuration of two orthogonal pathways with a fountain at their intersection has been used many times. It is not unpleasant, and has worked elsewhere. But it does appear it was employed here without consideration of local conditions. A brief analysis of the park's pathways suggests the design falls well short of deserving an ironclad endorsement from Hudson's preservationists.

Park pathways, properly understood, are continuations of larger systems of pedestrian movement. This is in large part because parks are activated as much or more by incidental or casual users as by deliberate users. In other words, a park's designer has a primary responsibility to encourage use by those who encounter it by chance as well as by those who make a conscious decision to go there. When incidental users are successfully engaged, a baseline of activity is assured, making the park safer and more enjoyable for all. 

Bird's eye view of the original park design. The park's internal
pathways do not relate to the natural pedestrian street crossing
locations, shown in white.

When a park is set into a street grid in the manner of the Seventh Street Park, the majority of users, incidental as well as deliberate, will arrive at a corner. From there, they will tend to move diagonally. This gives the deliberate user the most immediate route into the park and the casual user the most direct route through it. (In truth, designers visit "tricks" upon both groups to divert them from a perfectly efficient path; a discussion for another time.)

The historical park plan (above left) ignores these realities of human behavior and urban context. The entrance points are located at mid-block rather than at the corners, and the pathways run orthogonally rather than diagonally. The best-case outcome of this is undesirable wear patterns in the grass; the worst case is that pedestrians dangerously cross streets at mid-block when approaching and leaving the park. Somewhere in the middle of the best-worst scale, perhaps, is that the park simply isn't as good and inspiring a place as it could be.

The existing pathway that runs across the short dimension of the park does allow for some degree of natural pedestrian access, as it is an extension of Prison Alley. But this advertises a different problem: the Venus fountain lies on axis with a back alley instead of with a major street or important building. Those interested in the more essential values and goals of traditional city planning, and who do not insist on preservation for preservation's sake, would recognize this as a nineteenth century faux pas. 

Bird's eye view showing diagonal pathways, as a response to the
larger, natural patterns of pedestrian movement in the neighborhood.

At left I've shown the park with diagonal pathways. The result is much more accommodating of how most people will actually encounter and traverse the park. It doesn't solve the problem of the fountain lying on axis with the alley, but it does suggest the park layout can be changed and improved while still respecting the symmetry and formality presumably valued by Hudson's preservationists and traditionalists. (Although this is not to call this a solution; there are far more factors to investigate and synthesize than I can take on here.)

Of course, many in the preservation camp will poo-poo any proposed changes simply because they aren't "historic." This amounts to an argument that history is right simply because it got there first. Such history-centric individuals belong in the same category of non-thinkers as those who deem something of value simply because it's new and different. (Designers of the PARC Foundation Park in Hudson, take note.) A thinking person—someone open to the best of the past, present, and future—knows that history has gotten things right and wrong—not only in the usually cited arenas of politics, war, and civil rights, but also in architecture and city planning.

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.

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.