Not a great find considering the conditions of those specimens but very interesting nevertheless.
I agree with your guess, I think those are young and rotten Ischnoderma resinosum mushrooms.
It looks like an annual polypore based on how soft it was when you poked it, so it's not Fomitopsis pinicola (which was my first guess). I also thought Piptoporus betulinus, but it wasn't growing on birch, so that's out too.
Following the key for polypores from "Mushrooms of Ontario and Eastern Canada" by George Barron, which is probably a good proxy for what you find in NY, another potential candidate would be a member of the Hapalopilus genus. But I've never found any, so I wouldn't know.
Anyways, great article man!
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Excellent work as always!
Hapalopilus looks super promising. These were never the most perfect specimens, probably suffered abuse from the start on the populace street they were on. But they were also fairly young in the beginning and the traits were shared pretty uniformly amongst all of the mushrooms in the cluster, which makes me think they can be relied on for an ID.
Hapalopilus nidulans looks promising in its description, although Kuos pictures are limited. This is one time I really wish I had tested it with KOH.