The Venetian-Inspired Victorian Gothic Revival Treasure that is Troy's Rice Building

That's a mouthful, because this is a great building

(Rice Building, Wikipedia)

Troy has many iconic buildings, each unique for an architectural, functional or historic reason. The city’s building stock is one of the reasons Troy has become a favorite Capital District destination. Walking the city’s streets is a visual treat. Within the space of blocks one can see 200 plus years of architecture and history all around.

One of downtown Troy’s most beautiful buildings is the Rice Building, standing at the intersection of River and First streets. This triangular site allowed the architect to design a unique building, resembling in some ways, the prow of a magnificent ship.

There are many great architectural features here – the most striking being the banks of double-story arched windows on both sides on the second and third floors. All the building’s street-facing windows are capped by polychrome stone voussoirs – those are the arched wedge-shaped stone frames above the windows. A polychrome arch has more than one colored stone.

(Photo taken just after renovation. Photo: Ganem Contracting)

Add to that, the decorative terra-cotta tiles festooning the gabled dormers and elsewhere, the decorative brickwork and other details, and you’ve got a gorgeous building, and an excellent example of High Victorian Venetian-inspired Gothic Revival architecture. It was even more impressive when it still had a sixth story, a central clock tower and two smaller towers rising high over downtown Troy. The building was built in 1871, and was originally called the Hall building, for its owner Benjamin Homer Hall, who served as a City Clerk of Troy.

(Rice Building with original top floor and tower, late 19th century photo)

There is some dispute as to the architect. Up until recently it has been ascribed to Calvert Vaux and Frederick Clark Withers. Vaux is better known as one of the landscape architects of Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, with his partner Frederick Law Olmsted.

The English-born Vaux was an accomplished architect in his own right and was the designer of many important buildings built in the middle of the 19th century, especially in the Hudson Valley. He often worked with Frederick Withers on his architectural projects. The Rice Building has many similarities to Vaux’s Jefferson Market Courthouse building, which still stands in NYC’s Greenwich Village.

(Photo: Suzanne Spellen)

But recent investigations, especially by Troy’s own Diana Waite, have led many architectural historians to now believe that the Rice Building was actually designed by George Post, the architect of the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. If so, this would be one of his earliest known buildings.

Post went on to an impressive career which included the NY Stock Exchange Building in Manhattan, the Brooklyn Historical Society building in Brooklyn Heights, as well as many, many other banks, university buildings, churches and large commercial buildings, primarily in NYC. Post was one of the finest architects in America, a man who was far ahead of his time. Since so few of his buildings remain today, to have two Post buildings is a great thing, indeed.

Vaux and Withers or Post – the building had a great architect and it shows.

A fire took that top floor and the towers sometime between 1913 and 1920, but the building was repaired and in use until a foreclosure in the 1980s, which left it abandoned and run-down, like too many other downtown buildings.

(Pre-restoration photo: Ganem Construction)

In the 1990s, a non-profit group consisting of the Troy Architectural Program (TAP), Troy Savings Bank (now First Niagara Bank) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) saved the building. Aided by $2 million from the State, via Senator Joe Bruno, the building was extensively renovated and restored to beauty for use as a business incubator. The restoration work was masterfully carried out by Ganem Contracting of Sand Lake, a historic restoration company specializing in masonry restoration and construction.

In 2015, the building was purchased by brother and sister Luther and Lolly Tia, who have plans with preservation architect Joseph Michael Kelly to rebuild the towers, among other restoration plans. Hopefully those plans are still in the works.

The Rice Building can be seen as a law office in Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film, The Age of Innocence. It can also be seen in the background of the 2002 remake of The Time Machine, and in episodes of HBO’s The Gilded Age. Troy’s historic downtown and its Washington Park neighborhood are prominently cast as late 19th century NYC in this latest series.

Thanks to the preservationists, the institutions and citizens of Troy who cared about this building enough to save it from destruction, the Rice Building will continue to be one of the most prominent landmarks in Troy.

(The Rice Building’s reflection on the shop window across the street. Photo: Suzanne Spellen)

(Ganem Construction crew, with members of TAP on far left. Photo: Ganem Construction)