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EXHIBITION
AMOSKEAG
A
SENSE OF PLACE, A WAY OF LIFE
At the Currier
Gallery of Art, Manchester, N.H.
September 21 -
November 2, 1975
also shown
at the AT THE BOSTON ARCHITECTURAL
CENTER
November -December, 1975.
"If
you categorize architecture or
planning as had because it was
done by absolute monarchs or
thieving speculators you will have
to rule out most of the best known
examples of the past and
present."
City of Man, p. 228
Exhibition
supported by the National
Endowment for the Arts, and other
foundations.
Documentation and research was
supported by the National
Endowment for the Arts, and the
National Endowment for the
Humanities.
Exhibition
design by Randolph Langenbach and
Sergio Modigliani
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The
following
quotations are
from the
exhibition
panels.
...
The barbarian
may be, and
often is, an
agriculturist,
but his feet are
earth-bound. The
shepherd,
tending his
flocks on the
sunny slopes of
some Iverness,
may fill an
idyllic life,
but he is only a
dreamer. The
range of the
Arab is as
far-reaching as
the ring of his
fleet-footed
steed; the roof
of his tent is
as wide as the
blue-arched dome
of the Persian
sky, and his
freedom
undoubted; but
his legacy to
posterity is as
barren as the
sands of Sahara.
It is not until
man begins to
exercise his
fertile mind in
the invention
and making of
those things
which shall
enable him to
broaden the
scope of his
labors that he
starts on his
upward course.
George
Waldo Brown,
1915.
George Waldo
Brown was the
author of The
Amoskeag
Manufacturing
Company, a
History. This
book is more
than a history;
it is a
celebration of
the entire
industrial
system. The
book, and this
quote, express
the extreme
confidence in
industrialism
which existed
during the late
nineteenth and
early twentieth
centuries, an
unrealistic and
unquestioning
confidence which
makes the era of
Amoskeag's
greatest success
seem remarkably
distant from the
present.
"I
view great
cities as
Pestilential to
the morals, the
health and the
liberties of
man."
Thomas
Jefferson, 1800
"We
point to our
spindles and
looms, to our
forges and
machine shops,
to our railroads
and steam
presses and call
it prosperity.
Is it an
advancement for
which the
generations to
come will bless
us. ... My hope
and belief is
that the world
will yet go
onward, mind
over matter,
till a point is
reached as far
in advance of
that which we
now occupy as
the present is
in advance of
the remotest
past. Such is
the destiny of
our race, and
the man who most
helps to roll on
this tide of
improvement,
stands among the
greatest on the
earth."
Spoken
in Manchester in
1851 by Rev.
Cyrus W. Wallace
"In
the old Greek
mythology it is
said that when
the walls were
being built
around the
ancient city of
Thebes, the
stones assumed
their places to
the music of
Amphion's Iyre
So it may be
said that the
stones which
made the walls
of our city
assumed their
places to the
music of the
multiplying
notes of the
loom and
spindle."
Semi-Centennial
of Manchester,
1896
"Unlike
the cities of
Europe, which
were built by
some demigod,
son of Jupiter,
or by some hero
of the siege of
Troy, or by an
inspiration of
the genius of a
Caesar or an
Alexander, or by
the assistance
of some holy
monk, attracting
crowds by his
miracles, or by
the caprice of
some great king,
like Louis IV or
Frederick, or by
an edict of
Peter the Great,
it is neither a
pious
foundation, a
refuge of the
proscribed nor a
military post.
it is a
speculation of
the merchants of
Boston.
From:
Michael
Chevalier,
Society,,
Manners and
Politics in the
United States,
1839. The
quotation is in
reference to
Lowell but the
same could be
said about
Manchester.
"The
grumblers
pretend not only
cotton and
woolen, mills
spring up all
over the South,
but idle wheels
in our own as a
consequence.
This may in time
partly be
realized -
but only in
part. So long as
three things
remain we shall
continue a city,
and in spite of
all drawback, a
flourishing one.
These three
important
features are,
first, the best
location,
geographically,
in the state;
second,
waterpower;
third, railroads
.... It is
enough ..... A
people who have
grown a city of
thirty thousand
inhabitants upon
the sand hills
of Derryfield,
making the
wilderness to
blossom as the
rose, and
converting a
veritable desert
into a garden,
need not fear
for the future
.... Faroff
Nevada may
beckon us to
mines of gold
but in ... the
brains of our
artisans,
teeming with
invention, shall
be found a more
certain return
and a more
assured success.
Let us take
courage and
fresh hope for
the future of
Manchester."
The
Manchester
Union, June
13,1868
"None
of the
manufacturing
towns of New
England pleased
me so much as
Manchester, in
New Hampshire.
Unlike its great
godmother, it
has clean air,
clear waters,
and sunny skies.
Almost every
street is an
avenue of noble
trees."
Thomas
M. Young, The
American Cotton
Industry, A
Study of Work
and Workers
Contributed to
the Manchester
[England)
Guardian, 1902
Not
until one has
passed over one
of the pretty
bridges and
penetrated
through the
waterside
building to the
court beyond
does one begin
to appreciate
the enormous
extent of these
simple, stately
buildings.
Behind the
riverside pile
there runs a
courtyard so
long as to be
more like a
private road,
and on the other
side of this
road stands
another line of
mills, parallel
with the curve
of the first, so
that one cannot
see to the end
of them.
Thomas
M. Young, The
American Cotton
Industry, A
study Of work
and workers
contributed to
the Manchester
[England)
Guardian 1902
Perhaps
the handsomest,
certainly the
most impressive,
buildings in
Manchester are
the Amoskeag and
the Manchester
Mills. They are
not ornate
ornate mills are
of ten hideous
- but they
are built of a
warm red brick,
beautifully
weathered, and
form a
continuous
curved facade
(like the
concave side of
Regent Street in
London), nearly
half a mile
long. Rising
shear out of a
deep, clear,
swift-flowing
stream, upon the
other bank of
which are grass
and trees, they
need little more
than to be
silent to
masquerade
successfully as
ancient
colleges.
Thomas
M. Young, The
American Cotton
Industry, A
study of work
and workers
contributed to
the Manchester
[England]
Guardian, 1902
"There
are mighty
energies
slumbering in
those masses (of
factory
workers); Had
Our ancestors
witnessed the
assemblage of
such a multitude
as is poured
forth every
evening from the
mills of Union
Street,
magistrates
Would have
assembled
special I
constables would
Id have been
sworn, the riot
act read, the
military called
out, and most
probably some
fatal collision
would ILI have
taken
place."
W.
Cooke Taylor,
Notes of a Tour
in the
Manufacturing
Districts of
Lancashire,
[England], 1842
"The
advantage of
providing good
and comfortable
tenements for
employees having
a families and
nice boarding
houses for
others is
important, as it
secures an
excellent class
of work people
which tells
materially on
the prosperity
of the
Company."
Treasurer's
Statement from
the Directors'
Records of the
Merrimack
Manufacturing
Company of
Lowell, Mass.
"These
old factory
girls and old
factory boys arc
to be found
everywhere, in
all classes and
in all
vocations, and
they ought to be
as proud of
their dear old
'Alma Mater' as
the Harvard
graduates arc of
their college
"
Harriet
Hanson Robinson,
1883
"There
are few men
around today who
can say that
they were
'Amoskeag men'
when Amoskeag
was
Amoskeag."
William
Parker Straw,
former agent of
the Amoskeag
Manufacturing
Co., 1945
"All
the operatives,
at first, were
Yankees. Then
the Irish came
directly from
Ireland with
their families,
and after they
had dug the
canals -
of course we
employed them
for that sort of
work - we
commenced
gradually
working them
into the mills
... So then we
had first the
Irish, then came
the Germans. As
the foreigners
worked in, the
Yankees worked
out; I they were
crowded out ...
As the Irish
came in they
took the under
work, and
gradually rose
up till they had
places of
'importance That
hid been going
on gradually
till the Germans
commenced coming
and then the
French
Testimony
of Frederick
Smyth at the
Senate hearings
on Capital and
Labor, 1883
"As
for myself, I
regard work
people just as I
regard my
machinery. So
long as they can
do the work for
what I choose to
pay them, I keep
them; getting
out of them all
I can ... What
they do or how
they fare
outside my walls
I don't know ...
They must look
out for
themselves as I
do for myself.
When my machines
get old and
useless, I
reject them and
get new; and
those people are
part of my
machinery."
Fall
River agent,
1855. This
quote was cited
with great
indignation by
the mill agent
from the
Merrimack
Manufacturing
Company in
Lowell at the
annual
director's
meeting to
illustrate the
difference in
attitude between
the he
managements of
certain other
corporations and
his own.
"Resolved:
That the immense
power now
wielded by
corporations in
this country,
and the alarming
strides they are
making here and
elsewhere,
threaten the
total extinction
of individual
rights and
admonish us,
that unless a
speedy check be
given to this
power, we shall,
soon see the
worst features
of European
aristocracy
perpetuated On
the soil of
liberty, and the
independence and
rights of
citizens
prostrated by
the grinding
despotism of
concentrated
wealth."
Resolution
passed at the
New Hampshire
State Democratic
Convention, 1843
"This
country is
governed by the
Laborers. They
are the Kings,
and like the
Kings of old,
they are
flattered and
deceived by
designing
people, and have
to learn often
by a long and
hard experience
that they cannot
change the law
of supply and
demand any more
than King Canute
could stop the
rise of the
tide.
I
have said so
much because the
Labor question
is the great
question of the
day, and because
I believe that
the success and
prosperity of
the wage earner
is as much for
the interest of
the rich as of
the poor, for
their character
controls and
Moulds the
destinies (sic)
of this Great
Nation."
T.
Jefferson
Coolidge, from
the Treasurer's
Report delivered
at the Amoskeag
Mfg. Co. annual
meeting, 1886
"We
must not,
however,
disguise from
ourselves that
the competition
from the South
becomes more
severe With
every
year."
from
Treasurer's
Statement at the
Amoskeag
Manufacturing
Company Annual
Meeting, 1891
"It
may be necessary
for the
operatives to
submit to a
decline if they
wish to see the
wheels kept in
motion. A mill I
will never be
run I) long at a
loss."
From
the Treasurer's
Statement at the
Amoskeag Mfg.
Co. Annual
Meeting of
stockholders,
1896
"Q.
You say that
Manchester was a
sand-bank almost
when you came
here?
A.
Yes; it really
was."
Frederick
Smyth, 1883,
referring to his
first arrival in
Manchester in
1839 - one year
after
development
started.
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"The
grumblers pretend not only cotton
and woolen, mills spring up all
over the South, but idle wheels in
our own as a consequence. This may
in time partly be realized -
but only in part. So long as three
things remain we shall continue a
city, and in spite of all
drawback, a flourishing one. These
three important features are,
first, the best location,
geographically, in the state;
second, waterpower; third,
railroads .... It is enough .....
A people who have grown a city of
thirty thousand inhabitants upon
the sand hills of Derryfield,
making the wilderness to blossom
as the rose, and converting a
veritable desert into a garden,
need not fear for the future ....
Faroff Nevada may beckon us to
mines of gold but in ... the
brains of our artisans, teeming
with invention, shall be found a
more certain return and a more
assured success. Let us take
courage and fresh hope for the
future of Manchester."
The Manchester
Union, June 13,1868
THE 1975
SHUTDOWN OF THE CHICOPEE MILLS IN
THE AMOSKEAG MILLYARD ALLOWED A
CHANCE TO RECALL THE EXPERIENCE OF
THE SHUTDOWN OF THE AMOSKEAG SOME
40 YEARS EARLIER.
The Exhibition
included the documentation of this
experience, which is also recalled
in the oral histories in the book Amoskeag,
Life and Work in an American
Factory City, by Tamara
Hareven and Randolph Langenbach
On
Friday, March 7, 1975 at 11:00
p.m., the Chicopee Manufacturing
Company, which was located in the
"Coolidge Mill" of the
former Amoskeag Millyard, stopped
its looms as it had done so
regularly at that hour since the
time when the night shift had
ceased several years before. This
time, however, there was a
difference: The machines would
never again be set into motion,
motion which had coursed through
the mill for well over half a
century. The Chicopee plant
occupied the largest building in
the former Amoskeag Millyard. It
was the last mill in Manchester,
and almost the last in New
England, still spinning and
weaving cotton. Many of the
machines, which it used, dated
back to the days when the Amoskeag
Company built the mill in 1909.
Beginning
at the end of January as the final
warps ran out, the looms, one by
one, came to rest. The noise,
which to the casual observer is an
undefined din of rattling and
clattering machinery, to the
experienced hand quickly took on a
different cast, and then slowly
receded in intensity from one end
of the room to the other. A
battery hand articulated the
experience of the final shut-down
when, with the emphasis of a
well-rehearsed Shakespearean
actor, she explained, "You
can almost hear the STILLNESS come
across the room." During
the final week, certain looms,
like the last survivors in a
beached school of fish, continued
to vibrate in isolated comers of
the vast space, until they too
were finally stopped at 11:00 p.m.
on that last Friday.
"But
it's sad, because, like I said,
you go down the aisle and you say
I used to have all those looms to
fill I I, and, you know, you just
don't have anything. It's very
sad, real sad ... now it's so
empty."
Former battery hand,
Chicopee Manufacturing Company
What
this final shutdown of the giant
Coolidge Mill brought into high
relief was a profound sense of
time- a sense which in the
everyday life of the mill rarely
touches people as they continue
the process of growing up, getting
ahead and working at a clear and
closely defined task. But as the
"silence" came across
that room, it seemed as though,
for just a brief moment, distant
history had reached through time,
to touch the present. The people
alive today working in that mill
suddenly became one with an era
which had, in so many other ways,
ended years ago. Then, as the
plant was slowly dismantled, and
the last employees came to pick up
their last paychecks, the hand of
history again receded into the
comfortable abstraction of distant
time, pulling With it these same
people who had worked as a group
in what was the last of the former
Amoskeag Mills.
  "I don't
know, you just, I don't know how
to explain it, you're just
connected with it- just a
part of you. It's your life, I
love the mills, I love to work, I
love being a battery hand."
The
stillness of Chicopee in 1975 was
the stillness of a shutdown
Amoskeag in, 1936. For some of the
workers, the sense of loss which
they experienced at the closing of
Chicopee accurately reconstructs,
as closely as we can determine,
the experience of many of the
former Amoskeag workers upon
hearing in 1936 that the giant
plant would never reopen under the
name "Amoskeag.'.'
Perceived
in the abstract, an industrial
plant is an inanimate
object- a collection of
machines and equipment which is
used for a time, then renewed and
discarded as the rational
decisions of a management staff,
in tune with the variegations of
the world market place, dictate.
The personnel operate these
machines as part of a job which
also changes with the times
between individual advancement and
industry layoffs. What then is the
significance of the final shutdown
of the mill? Does the silence
which is forever have a different
quality from the silence which
lasts only overnight? Did the
mill, which began with bricks and
mortar, and the machines, which
began as hot cast iron, together
create a single unit which took on
an organic quality? Did the
Coolidge Mill ever in fact live,
so that at this one unmarked, but
profound moment, at 11:00 p.m. on
March 7,1975, it could die?
"After
Engels had visited Ireland in
1856, he wrote to Marx that ruins
were characteristic of Ireland,
the oldest dating from the fifth
and sixth centuries, the latest
from the nineteenth, with every
intervening period included.
Beginning in the eighteenth
century when artificial ruins were
first constructed for taste and
pleasure, civilization moved on in
the nineteenth century to create
instant, modern ruins - of
which Ireland is a rural and
Manchester an urban instance. The
twentieth century has, in America
at least, kept up the
record."'
Stephen Marcus, 1974
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