Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway



The Hudson-Mohawk region all around Albany, Schenectady, and Troy was the Silicon Valley of the nineteenth century, and thus in many ways it was North America's original model for how the entrepreneurial use of cutting-edge technology can foster regional economic prosperity. The eastern terminus of the Erie Canal, finished in 1825, was here. The first railroad line designed specifically for use by steam locomotives connected Albany and Schenectady. Henry Burden, a Scottish immigrant who took over a nationally-ranked iron works in South Troy in the early 1800s, was the inventor of the "hook-head" railroad spike that is now in common usage. He also invented a world-famous horseshoe-making machine capable of producing one horseshoe per second. That innovation ushered in the adoption of standard horseshoe sizes and the end of the custom-fitted horseshoe crafted by the local smith. His horseshoe business became so vital to the activities of the Union Cavalry during the Civil War that the Confederacy sent spies to Troy to try to steal his industrial secrets or at least to disrupt his operations. By the 1880s, his firm was producing 51 million horseshoes a year. The very first Bessemer converter used to make steel in the new world was fired up in South Troy, and in 1861 the iron plate for the Monitor warship from the Civil War was made there, too. Founded in Troy in 1824, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was so successful at attracting engineering and science students by the 1840s that both Yale and Harvard created "scientific schools" during that decade (the Sheffield School at Yale and the Lawrence School at Harvard) as rather awkward appendages to their more classical colleges. They feared that, if they didn't, they'd be overtaken by the upstart from Troy. On a per capita basis, Troy was the fourth-wealthiest community in the United States at the time of the 1840 Census. Many sites in the Capital District, most notably in downtown Troy, contain magnificent examples of nineteenth-century architecture. The area is one of the best in the country for retaining the flavor of prosperous industrialization in nineteenth-century America. It is thus a living museum of one crucial phase of the nation's history.

Founded in 1972 by eight area civic leaders, most notably Thomas Phelan, Institute Historian and former Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Gateway is the only comprehensive industrial heritage institute for the Hudson-Mohawk region. Its primary function has been advocating historic preservation and adaptive reuse of the industrial heritage of this area. It conducts tours, runs school programs at the primary, secondary and college levels, provides consulting on historic preservation issues and on regional history of technology in this area, and manages a regional technology museum. It is housed in the historic Burden Iron Works Museum in South Troy, just above the Menands Bridge (see photo), which is listed on The National Register of Historic Places. Membership dollars help preserve the area's past and promote its future. Please consider joining today by printing out this page, completing the information below, and sending it with your check to the address provided. Thank you.








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Make checks payable to, and send your contribution to:
Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway
Burden Iron Works Museum
Foot of Polk Street
Troy, NY 12180-5539
(518) 274-5267
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