Á Continuer: Adventures in Hudson - Part I

[mallorys_camera]

G and I strolled up Warren Street.

Eighteenth century merchants were big on grids, and Hudson's original grid is still intact. In fact, Warren Street is the best-preserved 19th century commercial district in all of New York State, a strange mélange of architecture, mixing Federal, Victorian, Queen Anne, and the odd post-60s Bahaus. It’s one of the few towns that still has alleys. (I’m not sure what function alleys performed exactly back in the day, but I do know they were once an important aspect of municipal topography.)

You’d think that the most upscale establishments – antique stores (as opposed to junk shops), restaurants whose chefs kinda, sorta know someone who was once nominated for a James Beard award, perfumeries offering organic botanicals – would all be close to the water, but no, they’re all higher on the hill, close to Fountain Square. A statue of Venus graced this fountain through the late 90s until it was replaced by a more generic fountainhead. Now, there’s no statue at all. Just a really ugly plastic Christmas tree behind a tangle of green fencing and yellow Caution tape.

“Well, that’s kind of a drag,” I fretted. “A fountain if not the fountain was definitely here last time I visited.”

“When was that?” G asked.

“Maybe two years ago?”

“Well, you’re exactly right,” G said. “This is a fascinating and passingly strange place. And exhausting somehow –“

“Yes!” I cried. “Walking through Hudson is always like walking through molasses!”

“You feel that, too?”

“Oh, yes! It’s like the place exerts a kind of backwards force pushing you into the river –“

“Indeed,” he said. “I want to eat something sweet. For energy. Otherwise I’ll pass out.”

We ducked into this very tiny chocolatier in an ancient, wooden, federal-style storefront close to the water. During the American Revolution, when the Brits shut down the Nantucket corridor, two enterprising brothers named Seth and Thomas Jenkins sailed into Hudson, then called Claverack Landing, to establish a whaling industry. The river bays had not yet silted up, there was land for the ports, and farmers in the surrounding countryside to provide whaling ships with provisions. The Jenkins Brothers dickered with the Dutch landowners – this was 20 miles out from the northernmost boundary of the Livingston land grant – and bought their waterfront property at a miserly price. They laid out a town grid. They renamed the place Hudson. An old wagon road was upgraded and turned into an east/west artery so that the brothers could travel by land back to Massachusetts whenever they got homesick.

Hudson became the first incorporated city in the new United State of America after the 13 original colonies won their independence from the U.S.

There was only one problem.

There are no whales on the Hudson River.

I rather like to think the Jenkins Brothers solved this problem by selling their souls to the devil.

In exchange for whales!

If they did, they got the bad end of the bargain since within 60 years, the entire whaling industry was kaput. Natural oil seeps are common throughout Pennsylvania, a mere 150 miles to the south. Kerosene is a much more efficient fuel for lamps than whale blubber.



The nature of the town began to change.

There’d always been bawdy houses and grog shops for the sailors and traders and wagon train drivers passing through town. By the mid-19th century, alcohol and prostitution had become two of the most important of Hudson’s industries. Not that the two-day traveler would know it unless he’d come into town specifically armed with that information. Warren Street continued to be a boulevard that reflected prosperity. The town had ironworks, foundries, a couple of cement plants, and textile mills.

One gridline over sat Diamond Street – now Columbia Street – where all the real action took place. Hudson became upstate New York’s dirty little secret. By the 1920s, there were something like 15 brothels in Hudson and numerous gambling establishments. In Hudson, the saloons didn’t even go underground when the 18th amendment passed. Bootleggers prospered. It’s rumored that Joe Kennedy got his start here.

In the 1950s, the reform-minded Thomas Dewey – the New York governor whom Alice Roosevelt Longworth referred to as “the little man on the wedding cake” – decided to shut down Hudson’s red light district. Whether this was coincidental to Hudson’s subsequent decline or a catalyst, industry petered out. Boom and bust. Bust and boom. By the early 1990s, the few storefronts on Warren Street that hadn’t been turned into low-rent bodegas had been boarded up. The hotels had been turned into low-income housing. One imagines Hudson in the early 1990s looked much like Poughkeepsie’s Main Street looks today. Awful!

And then the artists began to move in.

Followed shortly thereafter by the hipsters.

Comments

[faeriefiles.livejournal.com]

From whalers to hipsters? Now that is an interesting progression... or is that regression. Hmmm

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Clearly, we need an advice column: Ask Herman Melville! :-)

[faeriefiles.livejournal.com]

:) There ya go!