Hudson Heritage Association Announces 2025 Preservation Awards

Three singular Hudson properties were recognized at HHA’s annual meeting of members May 8, 2025 for the extraordinary efforts that have gone into their recent preservation and restoration. This year’s HHA Preservation Awards recipients include:

Located at 36 North Main Street, the Baldwin-Buss-Merino House anchors Hudson’s southwest Village Green. It is a high-style Federal style residence and an excellent example of the building style and tradition brought by settlers to the Connecticut Western Reserve during the early 19th century. The house’s name is derived from Augustus Baldwin and John Buss, both significant members of the Hudson community who occupied the house from 1825-1871 and 1871-1907, respectively.

The home’s design is attributed to architect Lemuel Porter whose other work in the region includes the Norman S. Baldwin House, the Whedon-Farwell House, the President’s House at Western Reserve Academy and the Congregational Church in Tallmadge. Many decorative details in the house are credited to Asher Benjamin’s American Builder’s Companion or Country Builder’s Assistant. The building was documented through the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in 1934 with additional photos taken around the 1960s. It is listed as a contributing building in Hudson’s National Register Historic District. 

The house consists of a primary two-story mass built in 1825 with a secondary one-and-a-half-story ell or wing to the south. Both building sections are post-and-beam, timber-framed construction with random width exterior board sheathing on sandstone foundations. Over the years, many architecturally incongruous additions were made that included an enclosed porch on the east façade and additions to the west of the house. These have been removed as part of the recent restoration. 

Over time, the house and property had fallen into a state of disrepair and were threatened by development. In 2019, a group of Hudson residents formed the Baldwin-Buss House Foundation and staged a campaign to raise public awareness and funding, with the hope of preserving Hudson’s second oldest standing house. Hudson-based Peg’s Foundation helped by acquiring the house and adjacent property in 2020. Working together, the two Foundations restored the original footprint and appearance of the house, and the interior was adaptively rehabilitated for contemporary use.

The Brewster Store at 5 Aurora Street anchors one of Hudson’s busiest intersections in the heart of Hudson’s downtown National Register Historic District. At the time the building was purchased by the present owner in 2018, it needed major infrastructure upgrades, structural reinforcement, and attention to detail to return it to its historic appearance. Constructed in 1839 by builder Leander Starr to house a dry goods store financed by Zenas Kent and managed by Anson A. Brewster, the property eventually became solely owned by Brewster. In the early 1900s, James Ellsworth bought the building and in 1908 established the First National Bank of Hudson in it. It was the plan – announced in 1962 – to demolish the building in order to construct a drive-through bank that galvanized Hudson’s preservationists and led to the establishment of Hudson Heritage Association.

The Brewster Store is an adaptive reuse project that uses both restoration and rehabilitation methods. It was documented in the Historic American Buildings Survey and is a rare example of a late Federal style brick commercial building, reminiscent of Boston architect Charles Bulfinch in its use of stepped gables, stone pilasters and insets, the roof balustrade, and the gradation in scale of the first and second story windows. A Historic Structure Report (HSR) was commissioned that helped identify the original floor plan, structural framework, and guided the reinstatement and restoration of historical architectural elements. Today, the building is used as office space by its preservationist-minded owner.

The Cook Barn, located at 657 W. Streetsboro Street, began life as a bank barn built in 1853. Over the years, it was reportedly part of a celery farm operated at the site. In the 1950s, it was converted into a duplex apartment. Ownership of the property on which the barn is located has included David Hudson (1799) and then Col. George Pierce, second president of Western Reserve College, who owned the property at the time the barn was constructed. 

The current owners purchased the property in 2005 and undertook significant restoration work in 2018 and 2019. Amish workmen straightened the barn with pulleys and raised it to install a new foundation. Wood artisans inventoried all the barn wood that would be harvested from the lean-to (horses stables), slated to be torn down. The 1853 wooden beams and floors from the lean-to provided enough wood to complete all the interior trim and baseboard work. Original hand-hewn beams are exposed throughout the interior. A 1200 square foot addition boasts original wood and beams as well. The exterior red barn wood siding harvested from the construction of the new addition is incorporated throughout.  

Following a flood in Hudson in the early 2000s, a water run-off project was undertaken by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to transform the swampy land near the edge of the site into a wetland with a perimeter of reeds that has become home to wildlife including American Bald Eagles, herons, swans, ducks, geese, river otters and others.