Buildings at 744, 746, 748, 750 Broadway

The buildings at 744, 746, 748, and 750 Broadway are historically and architecturally significant as distinctive extant examples of sophisticated urban townhouse design in the city of Albany. Built between 1830-1873, the group is an essential surviving segment of what was once a long, uninterrupted street of fashionable rowhouses and small-scale commercial buildings along north Broadway. Embodying the distinctive design and decorative characteristics popular during their period of construction, the four townhouses are distinguished and well-preserved examples of Federal, Greek Revival, and Italianate style residential design in their urban context. Although similar townhouses exist in several historic districts, notably the Pastures and Arbor Hill (both NR listed), the buildings at 744-750 Broadway are significant as rare isolated examples that have survived the radical transformation of the surrounding area. Both individually and as a group, these buildings represent an era of urban expansion in Albany's past that occurred in direct response to transportation innovations of the nineteenth century, most significantly, the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the emergence by 1850 of the city as a transfer point for east-west rail traffic. These four buildings also reflect the population pressures of the mid-1800s, which spurred an exodus of Albany's middle and upper classes to new residential districts north and south of the colonial settlement.

The city of Albany was incorporated in 1686. In that year, a charter from British authorities granted city fathers corporate jurisdiction over a one-mile-long strip of riverfront extending from Ganesvoort Street on the south to Patroon Street (now Clinton Avenue) on the north. Land along Broadway north of the city's corporate limits, including the site of 744-750 Broadway, was owned by the Van Rensselaers, a wealthy Dutch merchant family that had acquired the property from the Mohican Indians in 1629. It was part of a vast estate or "patroonship" that extended along the Hudson River twelve miles north and south of the settlement at Albany.

Perhaps hoping to encourage increased property sales of portions of the family estate, Patroon Stephen Van Rensselaer in 1764 surveyed a large tract of land abutting the city's northern boundary. He superimposed a grid pattern of streets and blocks over an area extending from Clinton Avenue on the south to North Ferry Street on the north and from the Hudson River west to Northern Boulevard. Broadway, which for over a century had served as the major road north out of the city, was the axial avenue used in developing the overall street plan of this large, and as yet undeveloped rural district. In 1795 the entire area was officially incorporated as the "Town of Colonie." By 1815, more than one thousand property owners were scattered throughout the newly designated town. In that year residents petitioned for annexation to the city of Albany and succeeded in their goal. The annexed territory was at that time re-established as the fifth ward of the city of Albany.

Despite its new political status, little development occurred in the fifth ward over the ensuing decade. After 1825, however, dramatic changes occurred within this quiet rural suburb. of major importance to the early development of Broadway was the Canal in 1825. The canal itself extended for 360 miles west from Albany to Buffalo. The easternmost terminus of the canal was at Albany and the inlet to the canal penetrated the Hudson River shoreline at the foot of Colonie Street just a few blocks north and east of the intersection of Broadway and Wilson Street.

Not only canal-related construction, but municipal improvements contributed to the transformation of the Albany riverfront just east of Broadway. As the canal neared completion in 1825, the city undertook the construction of a massive pier to enclose and protect both the canal inlet and a basin of thirty-two acres to provide moorings for up to 1,000 canal boats and fifty steamboats. The pier, huge dry dock, and storage facility extended 4,300 feet from the canal inlet south to the foot of Madison Avenue.

Albany's north-end riverfront underwent a dramatic commercial transformation in the years following the construction of the Erie Canal and the Albany Basin. As the canal's easternmost terminus, the area around the Albany inlet was heavily traveled and land on either side of the canal was quickly appropriated for storage of huge quantities of lumber being transported daily from northern and western forests. Planning and sawmills were constructed, telegraph and streetcar lines linked the new "lumber district" with the rest of the city, and services of all kinds grew up to accommodate workers and businessmen busily making their fortunes in this young but lucrative industry. Commercial and transportation activity along the Albany riverfront east of Broadway was further intensified in 1844 when the city's major rail lines were rerouted from the steeply graded State Street hill to the more gradual ascent of Patroon's Creek Ravine. A massive complex of tracks was subsequently laid along the new route, which extended along the east side of Broadway, crossing that avenue at Colonie Street and on to points west.

To this new commercial sector, where the terminus of the Erie Canal was located, where the Lumber District was beginning to dominate the skyline, and where convenient rail connections could be made, the new industrialism of the mid-nineteenth century also brought foundries, mills, and workshops of every kind. In turn, residential construction accompanied extensive commercialism and industrial activity here: Homes of laborers, artisans, businessmen, and manufacturers were all crowded at the fringes of this bustling riverfront district. Throughout the decade of the 1830s and 1840s that "fringe" extended only to Broadway and its cross streets running east toward the river.

Albany's population nearly doubled, from 12,630 to 24, 209, during the decade of the 1820s. This increase was largely influenced by the construction and completion of the Erie Canal. Population figures doubled once again over the next twenty years, reaching 50,763 by 1850. An influx of thousands of Irish and German immigrants swelled the city's population in these years. Overcrowding and a diminishing supply of available land in the old city center led to the development of exclusive residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of town. In the years before horsecar lines (the first being opened in Albany in 1862) proximity to the place of work was imperative in the selection of a neighborhood in which to reside. New residential development, as a consequence, followed the pattern of commercial activity along the Albany riverfront, radiating along the city's long narrow flood plains north and south of the old downtown.

Broadway, north of Clinton Avenue, evolved early into a distinctly middle and upper-class thoroughfare. From the 1830s into the 1870s, prominent area entrepreneurs and members of some of Albany's wealthy older families built homes here. City Chamberlain Sanford Cobb built the spacious matching rowhouses at 744 and 746 Broadway in 1841. Number 744 was later owned by the Van Schaick (Van Schaak) family, who trace their roots back to the earliest settlement at Albany. George Talcott, a colonel in the U.S. Army, was one of the earliest residents on Broadway. He built the house at 748 Broadway about 1830 and lived there with other family members for many years. His family later entered the business community as partners in a lumber concern. Jacob Sager, a prominent blind and window sash manufacturer, built the elaborately detailed Italianate house at 750 Broadway in 1875 and the property remained in the family for over twenty years.

The houses built by these prominent Albany families reflect the architectural taste of the city's upper-middle class during the era of north Broadway's intensive development. With its ornate marble and wrought-iron trim, 748 Broadway is among the most sophisticated surviving examples of late Federal/early Greek Revival style townhouses remaining in Albany. The building is especially significant for its highly refined interior, which survives with a remarkable degree of integrity and is perhaps the most intact and distinguished example surviving from this period in Albany. Numbers 744-746 Broadway, with their refined detail, rhythmic facades, and high stoops accentuated by wrought-iron railings, epitomize the Greek Revival rowhouse form and style typical of Albany in the 1840s. Number 750 Broadway is a highly distinguished example of ornate Italianate style rowhouse design as built on and near Broadway in the post-Civil War decade. Each structure reflects the prosperity of its owner/builder during the period of significance and together the rowhouses continue to evoke the character of this former upper-middle-class neighborhood. Apart from the Pastures Historic District (NR, 1972), south of the present downtown, there is little remaining to reflect Albany's nineteenth-century residential development along the north-south axis of the Hudson River. Along with a small cluster of commercial/residential buildings at Broadway and Livingston Avenue, the enclave of four rowhouses at 744-750 Broadway is all that remains to illustrate the historical and architectural development of northern Broadway during the nineteenth century.