21 Front St Schenectady

Henry Rosa House / Otis Smith House

The three story building at 21 Front Street one of only two houses in Schenectady having a complete brownstone front (the other is at 242 Union Street).  The house, which may incorporate parts of an earlier structure, is believed to have been built about 1856 by Otis Smith, a broom manufacturer.  Smith gained some notoriety in 1861 when his broom factory, then located on the northwest corner of Washington Avenue and Cucumber Alley, caught fire.  Fanned by a high wind, the fire spread rapidly to burn down a number of buildings in the immediate vicinity of the intersection of Front Street, Cucumber Alley, and Washington Avenue.  Sparks from the fire ingited the steeple of the First Reformed Church at Union and Church Streets, and as far away as houses located on State Street hill, near Crescent Park.  After Smith’s death in 1861, the property was bought by Henry Rosa, a prosperous fuel coal dealer, who remodeled it extensively and added the brownstone front.

The Anglo-Italianate style front façade is characterized by a three-part composition in which the two principal stories are positioned between a raised basement (the street level) which includes the entry, and a low attic that has window openings through the cornice.  The piano noble or principal floor, at the second level above the street, features a decorative cast-iron balcony and railings supported on brackets.  The brownstone, in fact brown-colored sandstone, is a thin veneer installed at the surface of the brick back-up walls.  Window and door surrounds are brownstone blocks carved to create ornamental trim, lintels, and sills.  “Fiddle-head” scrolled bases add distinctive features at first floor door and window jambs openings.