North Adams is a city in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its population was 12,961 as of the 2020 census. Best known as the home of the largest contemporary art museum in the United States, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams has in recent years become a center for tourism, culture and recreation.
The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex located in North Adams, Massachusetts. It is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing arts in the United States.
Wamsutta Mills is a former textile manufacturing company and current brand for bedding and other household products. Founded by Thomas Bennett, Jr. on the banks of the Acushnet River in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1846 and opened in 1848, Wamsutta Mills was named after Wamsutta, the son of a Native American chief who negotiated an early alliance with the English settlers of the Plymouth Colony. It was the first of many textile mills in New Bedford, and gradually led to cotton textile manufacturing overtaking whaling as the town's principal industry by the 1870s.
The Shore Line Trolley Museum is a trolley museum located in East Haven, Connecticut. Incorporated in 1945, it is the oldest continuously operating trolley museum in the United States. The museum includes exhibits on trolley history in the visitors' center and offers rides on restored trolleys along its 1.5 mi (2.4 km) track as the Branford Electric Railway. In addition to trolleys, the museum also operates restored subway cars, a small number of both trolleybuses and conventional buses.
Fort Halifax is a former British colonial outpost on the banks of the Sebasticook River, just above its mouth at the Kennebec River, in Winslow, Maine. Originally built as a wooden palisaded fort in 1754, during the French and Indian War, only a single blockhouse survives. The oldest blockhouse in the United States, it is preserved as Fort Halifax State Historic Site, and is open to the public in the warmer months. The fort guarded Wabanaki canoe routes that reached to the St. Lawrence and Penobscot Valleys via the Chaudière-Kennebec and Sebasticook-Souadabscook rivers. The blockhouse was declared a National Historic Landmark and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1968.
The Cheney Brothers Historic District was a center of the silk industry in Manchester, Connecticut, in the late 19th and early 20th century. The 175-acre (71 ha) district includes over 275 mill buildings, workers houses, churches, schools and Cheney family mansions. These structures represent the well-preserved company town of the Cheney Brothers silk manufacturing company, the first America-based silk company to properly raise and process silkworms, and to develop the difficult techniques of spinning and weaving silk. The area was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1978.
The Crane and Company Old Stone Mill Rag Room is one of the oldest surviving buildings of Crane & Co., one of the oldest papermaking businesses in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. It is located in southwestern Dalton, on a site where paper has been manufactured since the early 19th century. The building, originally used for processing rags, has housed the Crane Museum of Papermaking since 1930, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1983.
The Johnson Manufacturing Company was a historic mill complex at 65 Brown Street in North Adams, Massachusetts. Developed beginning in 1872 and enlarged through the early 20th century, it was at the time of its 1985 listing on the National Register of Historic Places a well-preserved example of late 19th century industrial architecture, used for the production of textiles for many years. The complex was demolished in 2007.
The Norad Mill is a historic mill located in Braytonville, North Adams, Massachusetts. It is the oldest mill complex in North Adams that has not had its exterior significantly altered, making visible much of its Italianate styling.
Phillips Woolen Mill is a historic mill at 71 Grove Street in Adams, Massachusetts. With a construction history dating to the mid-19th century, it is a good example of small textile mill complex of that period, containing elements that date from the 1920s potentially back as far as the 1830s. The mill complex was added to the National Historic Register in 1982.
The Renfrew Mill No. 2 was a historic mill complex at 217 Columbia Street in Adams, Massachusetts. Most of its buildings were built between 1867 and 1878, and were brick buildings with Italianate styling. They were built by the Renfrew Manufacturing Company, a textile manufacturer, to replace an earlier complex further down Columbia Street that had been demolished. The property was acquired by the Arnold Print Works in 1928. The mill was the town's largest employer for much of the second half of the 19th century.
The North Canal Historic District of Lawrence, Massachusetts, encompasses the historic industrial heart of the city. It is centered on the North Canal and the Great Stone Dam, which provided the waterpower for its many mill complexes. The canal was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, while the district was first listed in 1984, and then expanded slightly in 2009.
The Saco–Pettee Machine Shops is a historic factory complex at 156 Oak Street in the Newton Upper Falls area of Newton, Massachusetts. Although the area has an industrial history dating to the early 19th century, the oldest buildings in this complex, consisting of about thirteen brick buildings, were built in 1892. The property, a major economic force in the development of Newton Upper Falls, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. It was home to Clark's N.A., the North American home base to Clark's Shoes, makers of fine footwear, until they relocated to Waltham Ma. in October 2016.
The Houghton Mansion is the former home of Albert Charles Houghton and his family in North Adams, Massachusetts. It was later used as a Masonic temple, but is now empty.
The H. W. Clark Biscuit Company is a former industrial complex in North Adams, Massachusetts. The bakery that Herbert W. Clark built at this site began at a facility on Liberty Street, and expanded into a shoe factory building that Clark had operated with a partner. When the Liberty Street plant was destroyed by fire in 1913, Clark placed its employees on a second shift in the shoe factory building, and had the building now called the Icing Building constructed. This building was built in a style reminiscent of mills built in North Adams fifty years earlier, and is still sometimes thought to be an older building.
The Jaffrey Mills is a historic mill complex at 41 Main Street, in the central business district of Jaffrey, New Hampshire. It consists of a connected series of primarily brick buildings flanking the Contoocook River just north of Main Street. Its oldest buildings, the original mill and office building, are on the west side of the river. They were built in 1868, and feature mansard roofs and banded dentil brick cornices. The mill building has a tower that originally sported a cupola, but this was removed early in the 20th century. In 1872 the building on the east side was built, and the two sides joined by timber-frame bridges were added in 1897, at the same time the east building was extended northward. Later additions to the north of the east building include a storage area and a loading dock. The mill complex, the only 19th-century industrial complex of its type to be built in Jaffrey, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. It has been converted into residences.
The Milford Cotton and Woolen Manufacturing Company is a historic mill complex at 2 Bridge Street in the center of Milford, New Hampshire. Developed between 1813 and World War I, it is one of the few surviving mill complexes in Milford, whose name is derived in part from "mill". The buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The complex has been converted into residential use.
The Cocheco Mills comprise a historic mill complex in the heart of Dover, New Hampshire. The mills occupy a bend in the Cochecho River that has been site of cotton textile manufacturing since at least 1823, when the Dover Manufacturing Company supplanted earlier sawmills and gristmills. The present mill buildings were built between the 1880s and the early 20th century, and were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.
Sprague Electric Company was an electronic component maker founded by Robert C. Sprague in 1926. Sprague was best known for making a large line of capacitors used in a wide variety of electrical and electronic in commercial, industrial and military/space applications. Other products include resistive components, magnetic components, filter assemblies, semiconductors and integrated circuits.
In 1831 the land, owned by Luke Brown, had been purchased for $520 by William E. and Thomas A. Brayton. In 1832 a stone mill 40 x 74 feet, three stories high, with an attic was constructed allowing for larger print cloths, 52 by 52 feet to be manufactured on twenty looms under the name of T.A. Brayton & Co.. The factory village that grew around the mill became known as Braytonville. Sanford Blackinton, one of North Adams' leading mill owners, and Daniel Dewey, the prime mover in forming the North Adams Woolen Company, constructed the replacement Norad Mill in 1863. The village was briefly named Deweyville, after Daniel Dewey, in 1863 until his retirement in 1868.
