National Register Listing

Clinton Avenue Historic District

a.k.a. See Also:Palace Theatre

Along Clinton Ave. from Quail to N. Pearl Sts., Albany, NY

The Clinton Avenue Historic District is historically and architecturally significant as an outstanding concentration of middle-class speculative housing in Albany. The district was developed with residences between c1830 and ci 92r, a period when the brick rowhouse was the predominant building type in the city and includes over 530 examples of two- or three-story, two- or three-bay brick or wood frame residential and non-residential buildings, often set on high masonry basements. Although these rowhouses are similar to those found in other historic residential neighborhoods of the city, the Clinton Avenue Historic District is distinguished by the extraordinary width of its main axis (Clinton Avenue), its nearly unbroken streetscape in most areas of the district, and the uninterrupted path of Clinton Avenue as it climbs the steep rise between the Hudson River at its eastern end and the flat plain about two miles to the west where it joins the former turnpike to Schenectady (now Central Avenue). Although the perpendicular streets included within the district do not possess Clinton Avenue's width, they are also characterized by relatively unbroken streetscapes and long uninterrupted blocks of buildings of homogeneous character. Although the eastern portion of the district has suffered from sporadic demolition over the past twenty years following building abandonment, this has not diminished its overall character. The Clinton Avenue Historic District as a whole remains a textbook illustration of Albany's unrelenting westward growth throughout the period from the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 until the end of the century. It also chronicles the history of Albany rowhouse architecture from the late Federal/early Greek Revival period of the late 1830s through the Italianate, Queen Anne, and Romanesque styles to the turn of the twentieth century, by which time the opening of suburban areas within other parts of Albany brought about the demise of the rowhouse as the most popular housing choice for all classes of Albany citizens.

Local significance of the district:
Community Planning And Development; Architecture

Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.