The Gingerbread House that RPI destroyed recently was not your average building.

Besides its early history connected to the Warren family in Troy, it became the home of many Trojans after it was moved to College Avenue, including my family in the mid 70s.

Some of those occupants were movers and shakers. Before my residency, a group of artists and musicians lived there.

One of the inhabitants was my friend Jon Randel. Here are his thoughts:

“I have vivid memories of 95 College Avenue and was saddened to learn that it’s been demolished rather than restored. I lived there with my band Monolith in 1972. We loved “the gingerbread house,” and not only because we regularly played at nearby RPI. The house was special and inspiring, and its architecture was unlike any I’d known in Troy.

“We set up our equipment around the living room furniture, and on summer afternoons opened the leaded glass windows while we practiced, attracting neighborhood kids who hung around outside to listen. While living there, the band shifted its material from cover music to originals, and I started to become a serious musician and songwriter. Years later, I was involved in historic preservation in a suburb of New York City and, looking back at our former band house, appreciated its significance more than ever. “

Jon’s band Monolith was popular in the Capital District and was playing at the same time that my rock band Horton Strong was performing and opening for groups like the J. Geils Band and The Grassroots (we were the first rock band to open the 71 season for them at SPAC).

Both of our bands were known for playing originals, and Jon even sang backup on one of my songs when we used to record our originals at the RPI Playhouse, between 1 and 7 AM, when WRPI was off the air. Our manager, who also ran the station, would rewire the stage into a recording studio. We also practiced in the Gingerbread house and played for many RPI Frats.

Jon became a professional singer and multi-instrumentalist in NYC, and continues to record and perform. His newest album, “Filters Force the Light,” is on all streaming services. One of the songs, Factory Town, was inspired by growing up in Troy during the city’s urban removal of the 70s. I am currently editing a music video of this song that we videoed with Jon and guitarist Joe Musolino. Be on the lookout for that this summer.

Monolith evolved into having a dual identity. They performed one or two sets of original music in concert settings in the northeast (they were the opening act for James Cotton at one show) and, in their other persona, played three or four sets of cover material for fraternity parties and dances, mostly at RPI.

The band changed over time as the band members changed, and several lived there with Jon and Joe.

Another notable Gingerbreader was Alice Fulton. If you like poetry, you know Alice. She is an award-winning poet and, in 1991, was awarded a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship. She is also a professor emerita at Cornell. Her awards also include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Library of Congress Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Award, the MacArthur Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Her latest book is “Coloratura On A Silence Found In Many Expressive Systems.”

Alice also shares her memories. “I spent time in the Gingerbread House, as everyone called it, when it was rented by the band Monolith. I heard original music in that space, songs that will always be with me. I thought the house was Carpenter Gothic in style, but I’ve learned it had a richer, more illustrious architectural history.

“It was one of the most charming houses in Troy, and its loss indicates a superficial attitude toward the history of the place and lack of care for aspects that lend character to RPI’s location.”

Mary Paley’s name should be familiar in the Capital District. An award-winning documentarian, she is known for her three local documentaries, “The Neighborhood That Disappeared” (2014), “Echoes from the Neighborhood that Disappeared” (2015), and “More Than Words” (2018). I was a producer for the first two. TNTD, when it premiered on PBS WMHT in 2014, was responsible for the station getting the largest one-day donation in its history.

Mary is currently working on her third in the South End Series, titled “Stories From Under The Pavement,” featuring the Irish population of Albany’s South End neighborhood.

I recently received an email from “Joyce” when she found out about the Gingerbread demo. She lived in the house in the early 70s. She said, “Every house has a history. It is full of the memories of the ones who lived there, died there, laughed there, and suffered there. I can’t imagine how many memories were created in that one very small and charming house.

The house was a standout in a street full of working-class homes; the soul of Troy. It stood out because of its appearance. A quaint wooden structure amongst homes of brick and mortar. I would feel at home as soon as I walked over the threshold.”

So there you have it. It may have been seen as an orphan, a derelict shell, taking up space on RPI’s campus, but the Gingerbread House was the home of some of the most creative people who grew up in Troy.

Thanks to RPI, you can no longer point to and admire that house of creativity.

Got History? Don is the author of a dozen books about his hometown. You can reach him at drittner@aol.com

© The Saratogian