You Can’t Find City Hall: A Troy Story

Some cities have magnificent City Halls which are the pride of the city. Some cities don't.

(Troy’s 1875 City Hall building. Photo: Hart Cluett Museum)

Just across the Hudson River from Troy’s Lansingburgh neighborhood is the city of Cohoes. (For those not familiar with the region, the accent is on the second syllable.) Troy is called the Collar City because of the enormous detachable collar and cuff industry that centered here, beginning in the mid-19th century. Like Troy, Cohoes has its own textile industry connections. It is called the Spindle City primarily because of Harmony Mills, which was once the largest cotton mill in the United States. Its signature building, Mill No. 3, is a quarter of a mile long.

The Harmony Mills complex is huge. So, I guess it’s no wonder that Cohoes went big on its civic buildings too, especially the city’s impressive City Hall, built in 1896. It’s a big, beautiful limestone Romanesque Revival chateau of a building, its towers easily spotted when one enters the city.

Many American cities and towns came into the height of their wealth and power in the late 19th century at a time when their civic and economic leaders wanted to show the world that their municipalities were places of culture, wealth and class. They made sure their public buildings such as court houses, libraries, schools and charitable institutions were impressive, and well designed. They wanted to attract residents and businesses, knowing that outward appearances were important to the identity of that city or town. Nothing said, “We are financially solid, respectable and forward thinking,” more than City Hall, the seat of government.

(Rendering of the 2nd Rensselaer County Courthouse, via Wikiwand. The jail is the smaller building to the right.)

Across the river, Troy knew this was true, as well. In 1826, the city of Troy, as part of Rensselaer County, budgeted funds to build a new courthouse to replace the original, a much smaller building built in 1794. The building would be shared by city and county, with county courts and offices, but also the Mayor’s court room, a City Council chamber and space for the growing city’s departments and agencies in the basement. This beautiful temple-front Greek Revival building was located on the corner of Congress and 2nd Street, where the present-day Rensselaer County Courthouse stands today. It was completed in 1831, and the first Common (City) Council meeting was held there that July. Although it was never called that, this was the first Troy City Hall.

The courthouse was spared in the horrific Great Fire of 1862, which burned out much of the city. The Civil War was also raging at the time, but Troy’s factories and forges were booming with war-related industry, so businesses, churches and homes were rapidly rebuilt, bigger and better than before.

By this time, Troy’s City Clerk and Treasurer were housed in the Troy Athenaeum, a four-story multi-use building located at 10 1st Street. Other tenants in the Athenaeum were the Troy Savings Bank, the post office, and the Young Men’s Association, which later became the YMCA. The Troy Public Library was born from the Young Men’s Association’s large library, also located in the building. By the 1870s, Troy had grown so much that a new City Hall building was needed, a civic structure that could house all the departments and agencies in one building, in a building that was worthy of this still growing and very wealthy industrial city.

Marcus F. Cummings was Troy’s most prolific architect of this period. Originally from Utica, he arrived in Troy to rebuild his uncle’s church, one of many destroyed in the Great Fire. Troy was rapidly rebuilding and he soon found himself with commissions coming in right and left. He could do it all, but most of his Troy buildings are houses of worship, civic and commercial buildings and buildings for charitable organizations and schools. Downtown Troy is a treasure trove of Cummings buildings, designed by himself, with a partner or with his son.

In 1875 newly elected mayor Edward Murphy Jr. announced that Troy was getting a new City Hall. It would be built on the site of a cemetery next to the First Baptist church on the corner of 3rd and State Street. Those interred there would be moved to Oakwood and elsewhere. Cummings got the contract to design the new building. It had to be large enough to accommodate the city’s governing agencies, and it had to be impressive in order to be representative of Troy’s status. Cummings was more concerned with ample measurements and good construction, but also gave the building the necessary High Victorian style and design of the day.

His City Hall met the bill on all accounts. It was large – 150 feet long and 83 feet wide with the main spaces on the double-height second floor. That floor had two large spaces, one was the Common Council Chamber, the other a large public meeting hall that could hold over a thousand people. The other floors held the offices, records rooms and more. The building was designed in the popular Second Empire style, and was made of red brick, with limestone trim and cast-iron cornices and other details, all topped by a multi-faced clock tower.

This was Troy’s City Hall until 1938, when it burned down in a spectacular fire that destroyed the building and took down the spire of the First Baptist Church next door. The building was a huge loss in of itself, but the more irreplaceable losses were the records, historical documents, paintings and other historic and valuable city memorabilia that chronicled Troy’s history and development from the city’s beginnings. The city moved its offices to the upper floors of the Central Fire Station until decisions were made for a new building. Today, Barker Park and St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church occupy the site.

(The 1938 fire. Photo: Hart Cluett Museum)

City Hall was never the same again.

But not everyone was crying. Some people were glad to see the building go. Not that they were glad it went in the way it did and what it took with it, but for some, the old Victorian structure was past its expiration date. The 1930s were not a good time for late 19th century architecture anywhere in the country. Many people, from city authorities on down to the people on the street found the architecture of the period to be dark, heavy and old fashioned.

They looked at modern buildings like the Empire State Building and the Art Deco and International Style buildings going up as schools and civic structures all over the country and they wanted those too. Troy’s General Post Office, a grand Victorian structure built in a similar style and materials as the Cohoes City Hall had already been replaced in 1936 by the Classical Revival/Art Deco building that stands today. The desire of the day was to build a new, modern Troy City Hall.

That wouldn’t happen until 1974.

(Troy City Hall, 1974-2011. Photo: Skyscraperpage.com)

The French words “béton brut” mean “raw concrete.” The influential French architect Le Corbusier coined the term to describe what concrete looks like when it emerges from the forms used to cast it; it’s rough, with the lines of the molds still on it, it looks industrial and “real,” not polished and perfect. His design philosophies and the term joined with those of other like-minded architects in Europe to form a style we call “Brutalist,” which was popular between the 1950s and 1970s.

The style is very geometric, with boxy shapes cast in concrete. Often the “bones” of the building are visible – the steel girders, the rivets and bolts, showing the internal structure. Brutalist architecture became the go-to style in the United States in the 60s and 70s, especially in civic buildings. Without fancy finishes or ornamentation, the poured concrete, steel and rebar structures were cheaper to build than older forms of architecture, and were faster builds, too.

These buildings took advantage of modern lighting and HVAC technology and didn’t always need a lot of large windows for light or the circulation of air. The country is full of city halls, libraries, schools, police precinct and fire houses and houses of worship designed by a multitude of architects, good and bad, all in the Brutalist Style. Some are well designed and well built. Many are not.

Troy had been without a City Hall building for over 35 years.

(1970s postcard)

By 1970s Troy was no longer one of the wealthiest cities in the country. Much of its industry had already left, and more was on its way out. Troy, like much of the industrialized Northeast lost population, tax revenues and jobs. Its downtown was gutted by the loss of retail shoppers now flocking to suburban malls. But they wanted a new City Hall, partly as a representation of a planned renaissance. It would join the new Atrium Mall and the new parking structures and other modern urban renewal projects, as many in city government and in real estate sought to tear down old downtown Troy in order to build a new one that would draw people and money back.

The Monument Square area of River Street and adjoining blocks was the new heart of downtown. Almost an entire block of 19th century mixed use storefront and warehouse buildings were torn down for the project. A new City Hall, in a bold Brutalist design took up the space. It faced both the downtown buildings with the Hudson River behind it. It was made of concrete, glass and steel, in a design which didn’t even try to complement the buildings around it. It opened in 1974. People either loved it or hated it.

But by 2007, the city was already starting to talk about tearing the 33-year-old City Hall down. It hadn’t aged well. The roof leaked, the carpets had water stains, there was mold and talk of Legionnaire’s disease and the concrete on the lower floors was destabilizing. Because of that, the second floor of the open-air parking garage was structurally compromised and was closed. The building was a labyrinth of corridors, while city workers were not able to work in large sections of the building because of the leaks and mold.

It would cost millions to repair. The mayor at the time, Harry Tutunjian wanted to sell the the site for tear-down and redevelopment and go somewhere else. Downtown developer Sam Judge wanted to add it to his own substantial downtown holdings. According to the Times Union, he wanted to build a parking structure on the site that also included street level retail, many floors of apartments above and docking facilities for water craft on the Hudson River. His would be only the first plan for what was now called One Monument Square.

(City Hall in midst of demolition. Photo: Times Union)

The political and citizen debate over this issue went on for a couple of years as the building continued to fall apart. Finally, the state of the building made it impossible to stay there. City Hall purchased the Verizon office building located at 1776 6th Avenue, near the police station. The phone company already had plans to relocate its offices to downtown Albany. In 2009, Troy city government moved in.

The much unloved Troy City Hall was torn down in 2011. The year after the building was torn down, Troy’s government offices left the Verizon building and moved to the fifth floor of the Hedley Building, the only remaining factory building belonging to Cluett, Peabody & Co, once Troy’s largest collar, cuff and Arrow shirt factory in the city. City Hall has been there ever since.

(Cluett Peabody complex, 20th century. Today’s Hedley Building now stands alone. It’s the one behind the smokestack. Via Times Record.)

Twenty years later, discussions and arguments about finding a new City Hall building are still going on. Should they stay and keep paying rent in the Hedley Building? Where should City Hall be? Are there any available buildings in Troy that could hold the city government offices as well as needed space for public meetings?  What about parking space? What would it cost? How long to retrofit a new location? How about building a new City Hall? Where would that be?

1 Monument Square remained an empty hole on River Street for over 20 years. After many different plans, were presented and ultimately rejected, a new design for the site has finally been approved in 2022. But this story is not about 1 Monument Square. It's about Troy’s wandering City Hall. Not many cities go through this many City Hall buildings and locations. But that’s Troy for you, we’ve always been special.

(This article owes a great deal of credit to Diana Waite and her book “The Architecture of Downtown Troy” for information about the 19th century buildings in this story, none of which still stand.)

(Hedley Park Place building. City Hall occupies the 5th Floor. Photo: Loopnet)