page_title: Hoosick Falls Historic District
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hoosick Falls Historic District / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Walter Wood Factory, Hoosick Falls, Ny
context_page_description: The Hoosick Falls Historic District is located in the downtown section of the village of that name in New York, United States. It is an eight-acre area concentrated along Church, Classic and John streets south of the Hoosick River.
  Most of its 40 buildings remain largely intact from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period when Hoosick Falls was economically prosperous due to the mills and factories that drew on the river and its power. In 1980 it was recognized as a historic district and added to the National Register of Historic Places.
context_section_description: Hoosick Falls was first settled by two men from Connecticut just before the Revolutionary War. After the war, they built a gristmill on the river and the first bridge. In 1827, a half-century after its founding, the settlement was incorporated as a village.
  Other entrepreneurs from New England came to the village to set up textile mills along the river as well. The most prominent manufacturer in the village, Walter A. Wood, came in 1836. He patented a mower 17 years later, in 1853, and began manufacturing both mowers and reapers. After the Civil War, his company, the Walter A. Wood Mowing and Reaping Machine Manufactory, moved into an old cotton factory on the north side of the Hoosick. Four years later a new facility had to be built.
  Wood's company became the world's leading manufacturer in its product line by the end of the century. At its peak it employed 2,000 local residents, and Wood served two terms as a member of the House of Representatives for the district. He built the large three-story Wood Block, which dominates downtown Hoosick Falls. The company eventually closed in 1924 after competition from John Deere's motorized equipment, fires and other means of generating power for business made it less profitable.
caption: Wood Factory
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