Rice Building | |
Location | 216 River Street, Troy, New York |
---|---|
Coordinates | 42°43′52″N73°41′35″W / 42.731006°N 73.693144°W |
Built | 1871 |
Architect | Vaux and Withers |
Architectural style | Victorian Gothic |
Part of | Central Troy Historic District (ID86001527) |
The Rice Building, originally known as the Hall Building for Benjamin Homer Hall who built it, is a triangular historic high Victorian Gothic structure with Moorish architecture window arches in Troy, New York. [1] Built in 1871 for attorney, author, and poet Benjamin Homer Hall who served as City Clerk of Troy, it is located at 216 River Street on the corner with First Street. It has been attributed to the firm of Vaux and Withers, the partnership between Calvert Vaux and Frederick Clarke Withers [2] [3] after the death in a steamboat accident of Andrew Jackson Downing. More recent scholarship by a professor suggests George B. Post was the building's architect. [4] It is part of the Central Troy Historic District.
Originally 6 stories with 3 towers on the roof, a fire damaged the top floor and it was removed along with the towers. In more recent decades, the building fell into disrepair after it was foreclosed on in the 1980s. An effort to save it was launched and it was restored in the 1990s. A nonprofit entity called Rice Building Incorporated was created to turn it into a business incubator center. With support from State Senator Joseph Bruno, New York State provided $2 million for the project. The architecture firm Lepera & Ward headed the project. [3] Ganem Contracting was also involved in the project and photographed the work and many architectural details. [5] The origins of the name Rice Building are not known. [6]
The building was originally known as the Hall Building for attorney and poet Benjamin Homer Hall (November 14, 1830 – April 6,1893) [1] [3] [7] who had it built. Hall was educated at Harvard University and served as City Clerk of Troy. The building may have been an inspiration for New York City's Flatiron Building. [8] Hall wrote A Collection of College Works and Customs (ca. 1850), History of Eastern Vermont, from its Earliest Settlement to the Close of the Eighteenth Century (1858), and Bibliography of the United States (1860). [7] He married Margaret McCoun Lane, the daughter of Jacob L. Lane of Troy. [7]
A collection of his and his father Daniel Hall's papers include correspondence with Amos Eaton, ( geologist and founder of Rensselaer Institute), Edward Everett, William H. Seward, Hamilton Fish, Robert Todd Lincoln, Horatio Seymour, William L. Marcy, John E. Wool, and Asa Fitch. [7]
The upper floor and roof towers were damaged by a fire in 1913 [3] 1916, [4] or 1920 (when a fire struck River Street), [9] depending on the source.
The building was constructed on the site of Lane's Row [10] and replaced structures on that site. [11] Edgar Holloway made an etching of the building in 1974. [12] The building appears in the Martin Scorsese film, based on Edith Wharton's 1920 novel, "The Age of Innocence (1993 film)" as a law office in New York City. [13] The building was sold in 2016 for $800,000 to Tai Ventures. [9] Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was involved in saving and restoring the building. [14] The building features pointed-arch polychrome voussoirs. [15] A plan to restore the building to its original aspect with architectural features including the towers was proposed by Joseph Michael Kelly, Architect and Engineer in 2015. [4]
Troy is a city in the United States state of New York and is the county seat of Rensselaer County, New York. It is located on the western edge of that county on the eastern bank of the Hudson River just northeast of the capital city of Albany. Troy has close ties to Albany, New York and nearby Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital District.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Van Rensselaer and Amos Eaton for the "application of science to the common purposes of life" and is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world and the Western Hemisphere.
Prospect Park is an 80-acre (32 ha) city park in Troy, New York. The park is situated between Congress and Hill Street on top of Mount Ida. Prospect Park was originally designed in 1903 by local landscape engineer Garnet Douglass Baltimore, the first African-American graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He had also designed the 200-acre Forest Park Cemetery on Pinewood Avenue in Brunswick in 1897, which is now neglected and far from its picturesque days. The park started to fall into disrepair in the 1950s, and relatively little of Baltimore's work is still evident in the park today.
Calvert Vaux FAIA was an English-American architect and landscape designer. He and his protégé Frederick Law Olmsted designed parks such as Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City and the Delaware Park–Front Park System in Buffalo, New York.
The Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library, once known as the Jefferson Market Courthouse, is a National Historic Landmark located at 425 Avenue of the Americas, on the southwest corner of West 10th Street, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, on a triangular plot formed by Greenwich Avenue and West 10th Street. It was originally built as the Third Judicial District Courthouse from 1874 to 1877, and was designed by architect Frederick Clarke Withers of the firm of Vaux and Withers.
Garnet Douglass Baltimore was the first African-American engineer and graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, Class of 1881.
The Meneely Bell Foundry was a bell foundry established in 1826 in West Troy, New York, by Andrew Meneely. Two of Andrew's sons continued to operate the foundry after his death, while a third son, Clinton H. Meneely, opened a second foundry across the river with George H. Kimberly in Troy, New York in 1870. Initially named the Meneely Bell Company of Troy, this second foundry was reorganized in 1880 as the Clinton H. Meneely Company, then again as the Meneely Bell Company. Together, the two foundries produced about 65,000 bells before they closed in 1952.
The Richard G. Folsom Library is a research library in the Rensselaer Libraries system constructed in the Brutalist style located on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. It is named after Richard Gilman Folsom, the President of the Institute from 1958–1971. The Folsom Library offers a variety of services to students and patrons of the library. In addition to loans, these services include class reserves, general writing and presentation assistance through the Center for Communication Practices, cultural and educational events, inter-library loans through ConnectNY, individual and group room reservations, computer labs, and wireless internet.
The Carnegie Building is the current home of the Cognitive Science Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. It is one of the westernmost buildings on the campus and as such provides scenic views overlooking the city of Troy and the Hudson River. The four-story building is named for Andrew Carnegie who donated $125,000 for its construction, which was completed in 1906.
Frederick Clarke Withers was an English architect in America, especially renowned for his Gothic Revival ecclesiastical designs. For portions of his professional career, he partnered with fellow immigrant Calvert Vaux; both worked in the office of Andrew Jackson Downing in Newburgh, New York, where they began their careers following Downing's accidental death. Withers greatly participated in the introduction of the High Victorian Gothic style to the United States.
Mame Faye, born Mary Alice Faye, was a madam from Troy, New York. She ran a brothel at 1725 6th Avenue in the heart of the red-light district, which was known as The Line, from approximately 1906 to 1941. Her clients included politicians, factory workers and military men.
The Central Troy Historic District is an irregularly shaped, 96-acre (39 ha) area of downtown Troy, New York, United States. It has been described as "one of the most perfectly preserved 19th-century downtowns in the [country]" with nearly 700 properties in a variety of architectural styles from the early 19th to mid-20th centuries. These include most of Russell Sage College, one of two privately owned urban parks in New York, and two National Historic Landmarks. Visitors ranging from the Duke de la Rochefoucauld to Philip Johnson have praised aspects of it. Martin Scorsese used parts of downtown Troy as a stand-in for 19th-century Manhattan in The Age of Innocence.
The Ilium Building is a building located at the northeast corner of Fulton Street and Fourth Street in Troy, New York, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 13, 1970, and since 1986 has also been a contributing property to the Central Troy Historic District. Its street address is 400 Fulton Street.
West Hall is a building on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus in Troy, New York, United States. It is currently home to the Arts Department at RPI. It was previously a hospital, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Old Troy Hospital.
Benjamin Franklin Greene (1817–1895) was the third senior professor and first director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
The history of Troy, New York extends back to the Mohican Indians. Troy is a city on the east bank of the Hudson River about 5 miles (8.0 km) north of Albany in the US State of New York.
The Rensselaer County Historical Society (RCHS) is a non-profit, historical society and museum, to promote the study of the history of the Rensselaer County, NY. RCHS was founded in 1927, and originally operated out of a single room in the Troy Public Library, collecting manuscripts and published materials related to the county's history. It is located in the Central Troy Historic District, in Troy, NY. The Rensselaer County Historical Society operates a museum, and offers public programs from its location at 57 Second Street, Troy, NY.
The following is a bibliography of New York. New York is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Northeastern United States. New York is commonly known as the "Empire State" and sometimes the "Excelsior State". It is the nation's third most populous state at over 19 million people. The capital of the state is Albany and its most populous city is New York City. New York is often referred to as New York State to distinguish it from New York City.
The history of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) spans nearly two hundred years beginning with its founding in 1824. RPI is the oldest continuously operating technological university in both the English-speaking world and the Americas. The Institute was the first to grant a civil engineering degree in the United States, in 1835. More recently, RPI also offered the first environmental engineering degree in the United States in 1961, and possibly the first ever undergraduate degree in video game design, in 2007.
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