Clinton Avenue Historic District

Clinton Avenue Historic District occupies a long, spine-like area just north of downtown Albany, following Clinton Avenue from North Pearl Street west to Quail Street. Along with parts of North Pearl, Lark, Elk, Lexington and First streets, it holds 576 buildings, all but twenty of which contribute to its character. Most are two- or three-story attached masonry townhouses with projecting stoops, built speculatively for middle-class residents between about 1830 and 1900. Italianate details such as bracketed cornices and iron hoods are common, and Queen Anne touches appear on later rows. The oldest surviving building is probably 3 Clinton Place, dating from 1833. Churches, schools, a former police station and the Palace Theatre add institutional variety. Demolition in the 1960s and 1970s left gaps in the eastern part, yet most blockfaces remain nearly unbroken rows of nineteenth-century houses. The district was listed because it preserves the largest surviving concentration of this rowhouse building type in northern Albany.