Buildings at 744, 746, 748, 750 Broadway

Four brick rowhouses at 744-750 Broadway in Albany survive as an isolated remnant of a once continuous line of townhouses and shops along north Broadway. Each is three stories and three bays wide, with a side-hall plan above a raised basement. Number 748, built about 1830-1833, combines Federal and Greek Revival features, including molded marble trim and a notably intact interior. Numbers 744 and 746, built in 1841 for City Chamberlain Sanford Cobb, are matching Greek Revival houses with sandstone details and wrought-iron stoop railings. Number 750, dating to the early 1870s, is an ornate Italianate house with an oriel window and a bracketed cornice. The houses reflect the prosperity of Albany's upper-middle class as the Erie Canal, the lumber district and the rail lines reshaped the city's north end. Urban renewal demolition has since cleared most of the surrounding blocks, which leaves these four buildings as nearly the only evidence of the area's nineteenth-century residential character.