Patterson Great FallsPatterson, NJ
Paterson RacewayAlexander Hamilton and George Washington visited the Great Falls and began to imagine the industrial potential of the area. In 1791, Hamilton and others founded the Society for Establishing Usefull Manufactures (S.U.M.) and a "raceway" was designed by Pierre Charles L'Enfant (chief architect and planner of Washington, DC) to divert water from above the falls into the area's first mill. The design was simplified by Peter Cold and went into operation in 1794 and extended in 1801 to power additional mills. A major expansion in 1828 added an upper raceway that extended to the south, then looped back to the north to connect to the existing raceway. The final modification was made in 1838 to replace the source reservoir with with a masonry dam across the river and a new channel through rock to feed the raceway. In 1876, the S.U.M. estimated the available water power at 2,108 horsepower (1.6 MW), with about 87% of that actually being harnessed. The raceway served the community for the remainder of the 19th century before being outmoded in the early 20th century. (reference) My tour of the raceway ended at a fence surrounding the ruins of the Allied Textile Printing Facility, which has been the source of great controversy between developers who covet its lovely river views and preservationists who covet its industrial legacy.
Great Falls Generating StationBetween 1912 and 1914, the Great Falls Generating Station was built just to the south of the falls. It has a nameplate 10.95 kilowatts, quite tiny by modern standards, but a meaningful contribution to the area's industrial infrastructure at the time.
Paterson Museum LocomotivesThe former Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works erecting shop building became home to the Paterson Museum, which hosts a pair of old locomotives. Both were build in Paterson, although neither came from the Rogers factory. Panama Railroad Locomotive 299 was the last known locomotive used for the construction of the Panama Canal. It was built by American Locomotive at Cooke Works in 1906 and had a purchase price of $11,307. The 63-ton 2-6-0 (Mogul) engine (with a 49-ton tender car) had a tractive effort of 23,980 lbs at 10 MPH (640 HP or 476 kW) and could pull 3,317 tons on level track. A smaller 0-4-0 locomotive was built by Cooke in 1911 as American Brake Shoe & Foundry Co. #1 and was retired in 1964 as Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern, Inc. #3.
Hinchliffe Stadium40.91856757810943, -74.18228387832642Hinchliffe Stadium sits to the north of the Great Falls behind School #5 in a fairly impoverished neighborhood sitting on the cliffs above the postindustrial fray of the city. It's a lovely but faded exemplar of Art Deco that was built in 1932 for $350,000 and enlarged in 1964. It's most notable role was as home to the New York Black Yankees and New York Cubans of the Negro Baseball League, and it hosted that league's championship in 1933. The Paterson School District ultimately took over the stadium, but had to abandon it in 1997 when a sinkhole in the east end-zone became a safety issue. The district fell into state receivership, leaving no funds for any kind of maintenance, although in 2002, Friends of Hinchliffe Stadium was formed to help restore the facility. (reference)
Paterson, NJ in 2010When I visited Paterson in the Summer of 2010, it was a fairly rugged place, with large pockets of poverty amidst the abandoned and repurposed infrastructure. Headed up the hill from the city to Hinchliffe Stadium, I crossed the river downstream of the Great Falls over the West Broadway Bridge (1897).
Walking uphill on Ryle Avenue, I passed the abandoned facilities of the Addy Mills and Columbia Textile Mills, both EPA brownfields sites. I also passed signs advertising The Vistas, a condo development on the bluffs above the river downstream of the falls that appears to have been derailed either by the Great Recession or the crappy neighborhood.
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