Newsletter - Winter 2023
Welcome to 2023! Our Winter Newsletter has a review by our executive director of her first year on the job, an article celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Ford Motor Co. plant in Green Island, N.Y., news about the latest progress on our $500,000 New York State grant from 2017, and information on our plans to reorganize the Burden Iron Works Museum before its prospective reopening in the spring. Also, our annual membership letter should be mailed shortly, and we hope you’ll respond generously.
From Executive Director Susan Ouellette
New plaster and paint at the Burden Iron Works Museum
As I prepare to send out the 2023 annual letters, it seems nearly impossible to believe that an entire year has passed since I became the Executive Director here at the museum! In the beginning of last year, as I began the process of “learning the ropes,” I sometimes felt overwhelmed at the sheer breadth of the tasks that needed attention. The contracts and procedures to access the 2017 New York State Grant needed to be addressed immediately or we might have lost that funding; the building needed immediate attention in some areas in order to remain a secure and safe structure; a veritable mountain of accumulated paper files and documents needed sorting and, in many cases, recycling. To date, we have recycled or shredded more than three tons of paper. The documents that remain are now staged for inventory, organization, and filing.
In the context of the actual building, the planned work of plaster repairs and painting needed to be sourced, contracted, and accomplished. The entire museum space was disrupted in order to address the interior work. The whole museum interior needed updating, reorganization, and interpretive work. The new outside steam engine and dynamo exhibit also needed to be sourced, contracted, and completed – and it needed fencing to make it a safe exhibit once the steam engine was installed. As the winter days approached, a last effort on the part of dedicated board volunteers made repairs to storm windows that were in such bad shape that the glass was literally falling out of them.
Steam engine and dynamo at Burden Iron Works Museum, prior to installation of fence
There were many days when I doubted my abilities to keep up. However, with the help of our team of resolute volunteers, generous donors, and committed board members, we prospered and even flourished! We have gotten crucial financial support from supporters who attended or donated to last year’s Gala, and our 2022 honoree Peter A. Grimm has been extremely generous. More recently, the City of Troy has also promised much-needed support in the form of ARPA funds.
While there are still challenges to face in this new year, it is now possible to envision making the building available to visitors by the summer. It may not be a perfect summer season; intervening contract work could make our visiting schedule less flexible than we might like. But every bit of work we do makes our museum shine a little brighter.
It is with hope and renewed energy that I look forward to my second year with a sharper vision of what we will become in the future: a notable component of the cultural and historical heritage of the region, state, and nation.
Ford Motor Co. Plant in Green Island Opened 100 Years Ago
Crowds surround the plant for opening day ceremonies (Collection Hart Cluett Museum)
This year marks the centennial of the opening of the Ford Motor Co. manufacturing plant in Green Island, N.Y. The plant, which employed 1,500 workers at its peak, was down to 425 workers when it closed just before Christmas in 1988. The plant was demolished in 2004 and the site remains vacant.
The "Gentlemen Vagabonds" and friends on Green Island
The location for the plant on Tibbetts Ave. was chosen in 1919 by Henry Ford himself during one of his camping trips with a group of friends who called themselves the “Gentleman Vagabonds:” industrialists Ford, Thomas A. Edison, and Harvey Firestone, and naturalist John Muir. This location on the Hudson River was favored due to its potential for hydroelectricity to power the manufacturing plant. At the time Henry Ford wanted to build new plants in rural areas powered by hydroelectricity. The site is located on the west bank of the Hudson at the Federal Dam and Lock. The 6-megawatt hydroelectric plant was completed prior to the factory’s opening. The plant received the first hydropower license granted under the new 1920 Federal Power Act.
The factory building was 120 feet wide and 1,100 feet long. Although not credited to architect Albert Kahn, the building is similar to other factories Kahn designed for Ford.
The Ford ship Green Island
The Green Island plant never built complete automobiles. Rather, the plant supplied components for other Ford assembly plants. Over the years, these included leaf springs, pistons, drive shaft components, shock absorbers, wheel rims, and radiators and heater cores. During the Second World War the plant assembled Pratt & Whitney aircraft engines and made parts for trucks and tanks. When the plant closed it was solely making radiators and heater cores for the Ford Escort and its corporate sibling the Mercury Lynx. The plant produced 80 million heater cores over the period 1955-1985.
Aerial view of State Dam and Lock showing Ford hydro plant
In the 1930s the plant also served as a distribution center for Ford automobiles. Its riverside location meant that Ford could transport completed vehicles from its main assembly plants in the Detroit area through the Great Lakes and Erie Canal (officially known by then as the New York State Barge Canal) all the way to the Atlantic Seaboard via Green Island. The same ships could also transport components made at Green Island and similar factories to Ford assembly plants. Interestingly, Ford commissioned four special ships in the 1930s whose sizes nearly matched the dimensions of the canal locks. One of these ships was named the Green Island. These ships also featured retractable pilot houses and smokestacks to enable them to pass under canal bridges. The U.S. Navy commandeered all of Ford’s ships during World War II. Several were sunk or modified, and this service did not resume after the war.
Postcard depiction of the plant
Ford sold the hydroelectric plant to upstate utility Niagara Mohawk Power Co. when the manufacturing plant closed. After New York restructured the electric utility sector, NiMo was required to divest the plant. It was acquired by the newly created Green Island Power Authority – the state’s smallest public authority. In recent years the plant was operated for GIPA by Albany Engineering Corp. Albany Engineering purchased the plant from GIPA at the end of 2022. GIPA will continue to receive low-cost power from the New York Power Authority.
State Grant Approved; Gateway Working with Architects on Scope of Work
As noted in the Executive Director’s message, significant progress has been made towards the grant-supported work we hope to complete in 2023-24. The contracts have been signed and accepted at the state level for the $500,000 grant (EPF-174724-D2), and the Preservation Covenant has been signed and is now on file in the Rensselaer County Clerk’s office. These two milestones were essential tasks as they allow us to move forward in our efforts to issue bid proposals. Our architects at Mesick Cohen Wilson Baker Architects, LLP are now preparing the plans, specs, and documents necessary for the work identified in the Grant. These projects include rebuilding the main stairs at the front doors; updated HVAC for the building; window and door repairs/rehabilitation; repairs to the exterior steps to the basement; and flooring in the main museum. While we would also like to address the cherry paneling inside the museum, it seems unlikely that the grant funds will stretch that far, but we remain hopeful.
Gateway Looks to Reopen Burden Iron Works Museum in Spring
One plan for reorganizing Burden Iron Works Museum exhibit floor
After more than a year of disruption from interior renovation projects which have closed the Burden Iron Works Museum to the public, the Gateway plans to reopen the museum in the late spring of 2023. Not only will visitors be able to appreciate the restored and repainted plaster walls, but the presentation of museum exhibits will be significantly enhanced.
Among the improvements we are considering are new displays on the region’s precision instrument manufacturers and its piano and textile industries. For precision instruments, including the Arms Dividing Engine, the Gurley instrument collection, and the Geier & Bluhm objects, the aim is to consolidate the collection in a dedicated room. Currently we are awaiting the review of a grant application that could support the work on a dedicated space with better lighting and cases to display artifacts. Several years ago, the Gateway was gifted an early Troy-manufactured Gruner & Ossenkopp piano (circa 1860). Our plan is to create an exhibit that explores Troy’s role as an early center of piano technical development and manufacturing. Finally, the Gateway has recently acquired a collection of materials related to the local manufacture of nurses’ uniforms at the Marvin-Neitzel company, a firm that operated in the old Troy Waste Manufacturing Company building on River St. in Troy. While some of these exhibits may not be fully realized until additional funding is secured, planning is moving forward.
Current exhibits on Henry Burden and his inventions, Meneely bells, foundry products (particularly stoves), Troy-Bilt rototillers, railroad iron products, and the USS Monitor will be rearranged and better interpreted. The Meneely chime stand exhibit will be interactive with recorded bell notes set to sound as if the visitor were in the church tower playing the actual bells. The future of the diorama depicting the water-powered Burden Upper Works, relocated from the RiverSpark Visitor Center when it closed, is still to be determined.
Two exhibits, however, are not going anywhere. The largest bell (approximately 1½ tons) and the Corliss steam engine and flywheel (a little over 12 tons) must stay where they are since both exhibits are supported by special load-bearing structures in the basement. Their locations on the museum floor will anchor the new exhibit arrangement.
In addition, by rearranging the current office spaces it will be possible to consolidate research collections in one area. Inventories of those collections and better finding aids are also under development. All of this will make it easier for visiting researchers to access our collections — some for the very first time. We hope to have interns help us create these new digital tools and shelve the actual documents and books.
Watch the Gateway’s Facebook page for the latest information on plans to reopen the museum.