Broadway-Livingston Avenue Historic District

Broadway-Livingston Avenue is a small cluster of 21 historic features in northeast Albany, just north of the downtown business district. It holds two- to four-story brick rowhouses and commercial buildings built between 1829 and 1876, split almost evenly between Greek Revival and Italianate styles. Several storefronts keep original cast-iron fronts, notably 810-812 Broadway, built in 1872. At the north end, a 1900 riveted Warren truss railroad bridge on a cut-stone viaduct carries New York Central tracks over Broadway at Colonie Street. The area grew in the mid-1800s because of its closeness to the Erie Canal terminus, the river ferries and the rail lines. Merchants, manufacturers and laborers lived and worked here, and small shops served the neighborhood. Urban renewal demolition since the 1960s cleared the surrounding blocks, leaving this group as the only intact stretch of nineteenth-century architecture on north Broadway. The buildings are generally deteriorated but still show their original character.