Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1981 - 29

bolted together.
Just how the remaining mills
standing along the raceways can be
preserved is the central problem facing the Great Falls Historic District
today. The District simply cannot be
a 119-acre museum, pristinely returned to its nineteenth-century
condition. No municipality has the
financial ability to sustain such a
project. For a more feasible rebirth of
the area, the mills must be adapted
to new uses. Paterson's current program of revitalization calls for the
rehabilitation of the mills by private
developers for use in light industry,
and as shops, restaurants and apartments. The building exteriors will
be restored to their original appearance, but because the interiors must
be irrevocably changed, city archaeologists are researching and recording each site thoroughly before renovation begins.
T he "state of the art" in locomotive production technology of the
mid-nineteenth century already has
been particularly well documented
through extensive excavations at
locomotive erecting shops for Swinburne, Smith and Co. (1848), the
Danforth, Cooke Works (1852; rebuilt 1880), the Grant Works (1850,
then known as the New Jersey
Locomotive Works and rebuilt in the
1860s), and the Rogers Works
(1871). At that time, final assembly
of locomotives took place on bays,
not unlike automobile bays used by
modern service stations. Each bay
consisted of two parallel brick walls
with a recessed floor between them.
The wheels of the locomotive under
construction rested on rails mounted
on the two walls, while parts were
lowered into place with the help of
swing cranes. But unlike modern
automobile bays, the locomotive
bays were quite shallow, only about
one -half to one meter deep.The
sunken floors were intended more
for drainage purposes during boiler
tests than for access to the undercarriage. Over the 32 years represented
by the construction and rebuilding
dates of these four shops, it is obvious that few advances in production
methods occurred, even though this
was a time of great progress in the
field. This is a telling point, considering that this was the time when
Paterson was eclipsed by Philadelphia in the total annual output of
locomotives.

If Spruce and Market Streets
represented Paterson's "locomotive
alley," then Mill and Van Houten
Streets were its "weavers row." Here
the mills turned out sailcloth, garments, yarn, linen, mosquito netting, and, of course, mile upon mile
of silk. Intensive research and excavation at significant sites, the Essex
Mill (1801; rebuilt in 1870-72) and
the Phoenix Mill (1811; expanded in
the 1870s-80s), have uncovered
many features relating to their
growth and evolution, including the
wheel-pit of the earliest Essex Mill
building, cited in 1859 as the oldest
extant mill in New Jersey. The
building still stands today, although
it was mostly dismantled and rebuilt
in 1870. At the Phoenix Mill, archaeologists discovered a wonderfully preserved in-ground flume
which served the 1811 mill, the oldest intact structure in the district.
The Dublin housing district
swelled with new arrivals as immigrants flocked to Paterson, forming
a cohesive unit with distinctive architecture. More than a hundred
years later, the Dublin district retains its character and is still the
home of Paterson's working class.
Excavations were carried out at the
northern end of Dublin on a block
where the houses were demolished
in the mid-1970s. The best evidence
for its nineteenth-century
inhabitants came from five privies. Interestingly, the block was at first an
upper middle class preserve, home to
mill managers and owners. Only
gradually did it evolve into a working class neighborhood. Literally
tens of thousand of small artifacts
have been found, mostly dating to
this earlier period. They seem to reflect a populace that lived a comfortable but by no means extravagant
lifestyle. What is now needed is to
investigate further south in the
Dublin area, which was settled later
and more exclusively by the working
class. By comparing the material
from this area with the other more
affluent parts of Dublin, it will be
possible to see some of the real differences between economic classes.
Much has been learned at
Paterson in a relatively short time.
The locomotive shops have outlined
the birth and death of an industry;
the mills have shed enormous light
on the early phases of the Industrial
Revolution; and the still-standing
raceways tell of days gone by. There
is still more to be learned, but the

archaeological work at Paterson has
halted and no future work is planned. Cutbacks in state and federal
funding are the primary reasons,
but economic pressure and the drawbacks of excavation in an urban area
have also posed problems for extended archaeological fieldwork and
analyses. Future study will be dependent on private investment at individual sites. In the meantime, developers will move quickly to transform some of the mills and locomotive shops for twentieth-century use.
Yet industrial Paterson cries out
for more attention. Most of the major
research questions raised still remain unanswered. The United
States, today the largest producer of
industrial goods in the world, got its
start in these few blocks on the west
side of Paterson. If there is a hope of
understanding how the industrial
process evolved into what it is today,
we must first know how it began.
Paterson is our chance.

Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1981

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1981