Downtown Cohoes Historic District

Downtown Cohoes is a 35-acre historic district in Albany County, New York, covering the commercial and civic center of a former mill city. Of its 165 properties, 70 are commercial buildings, 75 are residences, 12 are public buildings including six churches, a train station and city hall, and eight are industrial or utility structures. Remsen Street forms its central axis. Most buildings are two-to-four-story brick structures with bracketed cornices and hood moldings in the Italianate and Second Empire styles. Early survivors include a 1820s duplex on White Street and a Federal house built in 1836 by the carpenter Joshua Clarke. The Cohoes Music Hall and Silliman Memorial Presbyterian Church are individually listed. Growth tied to the first industrial ventures, the enlarged Erie Canal and the 1848 incorporation of the village shaped the street plan. Because building nearly stopped in the 1930s, many prosperous-era buildings survive, giving the district its period of significance of 1820 to 1930.