Center Square/Hudson-Park Historic District

The Center Square Hudson-Park Historic District is a harmonious collection of diverse nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century urban architecture. The district is predominately residential largely comprised of rowhouses, but there are also six churches, various office and service buildings, and a few industrial buildings. A wide variety of eclectic architectural styles are represented including Greek Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, High Victorian Gothic Revival, Queen Anne, Richardsonian Romanesque, Second Renaissance Revival, and Georgian Revival. Some of the buildings in the district are unique designs with an architectural sophistication comparable to that found in Boston's Back Bay and New York City's West Side. Architects whose designs are found in the district include William Hodgens, Marcus T. Reynolds, Albert Fuller, Charles G. Odgen, Ernest Hoffman, Alexander Selkirk, Worthington Palmer, and Earle L. Kempton. However, most buildings in the district represent more conservative approaches to construction, illustrating how the successive eclectic styles were interpreted by ordinary builders.

Although the city of Albany dates from the seventeenth century, the area comprising this district did not develop until Albany's nineteenth-century expansion and prosperity. Scattered examples of late Federal period architecture survive, but most of the approximately 1,200 buildings in the district were erected between 1845 and 1920. Albany was a small city with a population of less than 13,000 in 1820. Following the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, the city grew rapidly, becoming an important transportation transfer point as well as major lumber and grain distributing center. By 1840, Albany's population Thad risen to about 33,000 and it was to attain 62,000 in 1865 and 90,000 in 1880.

The earliest settlement in the district was on its hilltops. State Street and Lydius (now Madison Avenue) was the first to receive scattered structures. A few of these still exist including & two and one-half story, frame house at 321 State Street erected in 1837, and the Alfred Conckling House at 353 Madison Avenue (erected in 1827, the third story added about 1920).

In the 1840s the city's prosperity allowed the Ruttenkill Creek to be filled from Hawk to Lark Streets and from Madison Avenue to State Street; housing began to be erected along the newly created streets. In contrast to earlier free-standing buildings in the district, rows of speculator-built, attached houses were frequently erected after 1845. After this date, even individual houses were generally rowhouses.

Maps of 1857, 1876, and 1891 show that the area developed steadily. The builders or speculators active in the district included businessmen, carpenter-builders, and small investors who financed the construction of their own homes and an adjacent rental property or two. Buildings along a street were not the product of one builder but were erected in varying styles and of different materials by numerous persons over a span of years.

Often one person was responsible for several rows of buildings erected at various times. For instance, William Bender, a prosperous merchant, who lived in the district at 285 Lark Street, had 289-297 Lark Street erected in 1857, 288-300 Lark Street in 1876, and 299-301 Lark Street in 1884. James W. Eaton, a builder who had been superintendent of construction for the New York State Capitol building and who had been the mason for the construction of Westminister Church (in the district at 262 State Street, built in 1861-1862; William Hodgens, architect), built 163-165 Chestnut Street in 1874-1876, 343-345 State Street in 1876 and 204-220 Lancaster Street in 1889.

The district contains simple dwellings for working-class families as well as more elaborate homes for the middle class and wealthy. Also during the nineteenth century, it had several breweries, a soap factory, blacksmith shops, lumber dealers, and similar enterprises. Isolated industrial buildings remain.

Proximity to the romantically landscaped Washington Park (created after 1869) immediately to the west of the district and to the new State Capitol building erected between 1869 and 1898 near the northeast corner of the district made State Street a very fashionable place to reside and wealthy Albanians built lavish homes along it in a variety of high-style architectural modes. By 1896 residents of practically every State Street house in the district were included in Albany's Society List.

The area south of Elm Street remained vacant longer than elsewhere in the district. Growth here was probably inhibited by the sloping terrain, by the partial isolation due to the ravine to the south, and by distance from the center of the city and from streetcar lines. By 1886, the Beaver Creek ravine had become a public park but its slow improvement prevented it from being a growth catalyst like the earlier Washington Park.

In the early twentieth century, the character of the neighborhood began to change. Several large apartment buildings were erected and gradually many of the single-family homes were divided into apartments. The Alfred E. Smith State Office Building was begun in 1926 at the northwest corner of South Swan and State Streets. While the concrete highrise with setbacks is an interesting building in the Art Deco style, other subsequent office buildings erected in the district are undistinguished architecturally and are considered intrusions.