North Adams Manufacturing Sites

Note: This page is still under construction.

Manufacturing in North Adams in the late eighteenth/ early nineteenth centuries with grist mills and textile mills. These early "manufactories" started off rather modestly. However, about half-way through the nineteenth century, manufacturing in the town began to come into its own-- with no small thanks to both the economic development spurred by the Civil War and by the expansion of the railroad into North Adams.

During the latter half of the the century, these developments sparked the growth of a myriad of manufacturers, including carriage makers, cigar makers, etc. The two largest sectors of the industrial scene in North Adams were textile production and shoe/boot manufacturing. The Arnold Print Works (along the Beaver and Eclipse Mills, its subsidiaries), proved to dominate the textile sector, and had a huge complex fronted by Marshall Street and Massachusetts Ave and roughly bounded by the confluence of the two branches of the Hoosic River. Across Marshall Street was Calvin Sampson's shoe factory, the site of controversy during the 1870's when Sampson brought in a trainload of Chinese immigrants to replace his striking workers. (For more information on this subject, which received national attention at the time, refer to works by Bowen, Pidgeon, Rudolph, or Filson.

In the twentieth century, shoe and textile manufacturing gradually declined in the area, although several residents have claimed that the Arnold Print Works' steady presence in the area was what kept the town going through the Depression Era. The 1930's saw the gradual rise of the next generation of North Adams industry, Sprague Electric. The Sprague family, whose innovations in electronics components began to pay off in the late 1920's, were looking for a place to expand their operations, and were convinced that North Adams would be a great place to try-- right before the Depression started. Nevertheless, the fledgling compnay managed to stick out the Depression years, and really began to blossom during World War II, at a time when the Print Works, though fiscally solvent, could not get enough materials due to wartime shortages to continue production. Thus, the Print Works liquidated its assets in 1942, leaving the massive complex on Marshall Street empty-- though not for long. Within a year, the burdgeoning Sprague moved in and began production at this site as well as continuing in its other locations. Sprague would remain in the complex until the mid-1980's, and dominated North Adams industrial production from World War II until its closing, at one time employing a quarter of the city's workers.

These pages are written and maintained by Christia Mulvey. Return to Main Page