hudsonmagazine.us. Copyright 2016 Lisa LaMonica
The
Armory is seen here in a 1905 postcard. It stood at the corner of Fifth
and State Streets and was built
in 1898. These days, it is the home to the new Senior Center, Community Center and Hudson Area Library, with a Grand Opening Saturday, April 9.
Archival video footage of the December 31, 1928 Hudson
Armory fire shows a vintage
fire pumper and efforts to save the building. The footage is
available on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpA_ViqNL_k.
Most
of the drill shed was destroyed by fire in
1921.
The Armory closed in the 1970s and had been owned privately.
It
functioned as an armory for New York State National Guard units, and
community events such as
proms, auto shows, and Harlem Globetrotters basketball games were
also held there. Units at the
armory engaged in conflicts during the Spanish-American War, World War I, and
World War II. Units received much local appreciation for assistance
in 1900 while enforcing a
quarantine order during a smallpox outbreak in Stockport. In 1917, a
unit was dispatched to the Catskills
to protect the reservoirs that supplied New York City’s drinking
water after a German plot
was uncovered to poison it.
The postcard reads: “ I wonder how you
will find our darling little sister today.” -March
13, 1906. Reprinted with permission from Images
of America: Hudson,
Lisa LaMonica.
Available from the publisher online at https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781467122603. and at area bookstores.
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