Board gains demolition oversight
Albany Historic Resources panel granted power to review building destruction orders
The Common Council passed legislation on Monday designed to strengthen the Historic Resources Commission’s oversight of emergency demolitions in the city.
The legislation would allow the commission to review orders for emergency demolitions and stabilizations on landmarks or properties in historic districts in the city.
Councilman Richard Conti, one of the legislation's main sponsors, said the city’s
historic buildings were one of its greatest assets.
“Every time we lose a part of that historic infrastructure, we lose a part of our history as well,” he said during Monday’s meeting. “It’s especially discouraging when the loss comes through emergency demolition.”
The legislation also requires the commission and the city’s Building Department to publish an annual report on the number and location of emergency demolitions in the city. That report will note the architectural or historical significance of any demolitions within a historic district and recommend stabilization actions to prevent other landmarks from being demolished.
Nothing in the legislation would prevent the building department from taking steps to stabilize or demolish buildings if they threaten public safety. A connected ordinance would strengthen the reporting requirements for the city’s vacant building registry.
Pam Howard, executive
director of the Historic Albany Foundation said the foundation was pleased with the legislation and saw it as a good first step. She credited the city with reducing the number of emergency
demolitions in recent years.
Howard said that in the future she hoped the city would invest in outside experts to assess historic buildings to help preserve them.
The city took emergency action to demolish 95 buildings in 2017 and 65 buildings in 2018, followed by 70 buildings in 2019, according to Building Department records. Another handful were stabilized each year.
The legislation is meant to push the city to take more stabilization efforts in its historic districts, rather than demolitions. But Conti emphasized the legislation does not solve the problem or end emergency demolitions.
“Hopefully it gets us to the point where we won’t have to destroy those buildings,” he said.
Conti noted the work that various city departments did in support of the legislation.
Councilwoman Cathy Fahey said the legislation rose out of bad communication in the city about demolitions over the years that led to public outcry.
“There was tremendous frustration and this legislation, and some of the work by the Historic Resource Commission and action by the public, brought this whole issue to the forefront,” she said.
If you are a writer aiming to follow our governor’s lead with another new book about the COVID-19 pandemic (well before it has run its course), I urge you to step back and read Daniel
Defoe’s “A Journal of the Plague Year.”
Published in 1727 (eight years after “Robinson Crusoe”), it has long been considered a masterful blend of fact and fiction — factual in that he and his family lived through that terrible event, but partly fictional, because during the 1665 London plague he was 5 years old. The lesson for today’s aspiring authors: Let events settle before you retell them — maybe not a full 62 years (but note that we continue learning more about the deadly 1918 flu).
Defoe spent intervening years collecting information from informal and formal sources, including records of weekly deaths posted across London. Had Google and (anti-) social media been available, he might have finished much sooner, but what a mess that would have been. One of the hallmarks of his tale is a painstaking effort to avoid recounting rumor, gossip, and exaggeration. Also evident is his deep concern and empathy for fellow citizens, even some of his flakiest characters.
Throughout the book, I found unfamiliar phrasing but many familiar happenings. For example, once the bubonic plague had begun to take its toll, London was filling with “quacks” (Defoe’s own term), posting notices at street corners promising
cures and preventives. None worked, but many of the poorer residents were customers, some of whom died after taking the potions. The charlatans themselves often died from the disease or else sped away with their profits. Seems familiar.
The bubonic plague was far more deadly than our pandemic, and symptoms progressed rapidly after infection. No diagnostic tests were available, other than a suggested breath test that almost no one was willing to conduct. Instead, infected households were assigned wardens and nurses to keep and treat them inside their homes, but the inhabitants often cheated, sneaking out to roam the town, or heading for the countryside. Many of the wealthy had already departed with their servants to country estates. Eventually the “urban” plague made its way to rural areas, where villagers set roadblocks against refugees, often too late to stop the spread. Fear, uncertainty, social disparities and cheating — still seems familiar.
Defoe’s heroes include doctors who remained in London (others fled) and pastors who replaced fleeing clergy. His most endearing heroes are the working poor, who took on the dangerous tasks of running errands, nursing the sick, carting the dead away, and guarding contaminated households. The lord mayor of London and other officials receive praise for maintaining stable food supplies, helping the unemployed, and implementing sanitary restrictions.
In many ways these heroes seem wellaligned with ours, courageous and dedicated to public service, although ours need an extra dose of courage to cope with obstinate resisters. Today’s villains (let’s call them self-serving blowhards) may not have fared well then, when few people thought the plague could be ignored or wished away. Neighbors who appeared healthy the previous day were collapsing and dying in the streets. Our disease is less visible and less deadly, so some carelessness could be forgiven. However, despite our advanced science, public memory is being scrambled by voluble bad actors.
Eventually, most Londoners survived the plague, thanks to their vigilance and resourcefulness. While we await our own outcome, patience, caution and awareness remain our allies. My trusted information will continue to come from scientists and reliable journalists, not half-baked books about an unfinished pandemic.