Broadway and Livingston Ave., Albany, New York. County/parish: Albany.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places January 07, 1988. NRIS 87002300.
20 contributing buildings. 1 contributing structure.
The Broadway–Livingston Avenue Historic District is located at the junction of those two streets in Albany, New York, United States. It includes seven buildings remaining from an original 20, all contributing properties, and a Warren truss railroad bridge. In 1988 the area was recognized as a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
It is the only intact concentration of 19th-century commercial and residential architecture on Broadway north of downtown Albany. Most of its buildings are two- and three-story rowhouses interspersed with brick commercial buildings of comparable scale and built between 1829 and 1876, a time period when the neighborhood enjoyed great prosperity as the eastern terminus of the Erie Canal. The bridge was built in 1900 to carry the New York Central Railroad tracks across Broadway at Colonie Street.
Urban renewal programs had cleared much of the surrounding land when the district was designated. Many of the buildings in the district were in poor condition at that time, and more than half have been demolished since then, leaving vacant lots. The remaining buildings still show evidence of urban blight; renovations have begun in the 2010s. Due to the demolitions, local historic preservation groups consider the district one of the most endangered historic sites in the city.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75316179