Foundry School Museum
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The Foundry
School Museum, operated by the Putnam County Historical
Society was founded in 1906 by a group of prominent
Philipstown residents and chartered the next year to
be the first historical society in the county. Its dedicated
early members were an illustrious group of Cold Spring
residents: A. Augustus Healy, Gouverneur Paulding, William
Henry Haldane, Robert Floyd-Jones, and William Wood.
Galvanized by the desire to collect and preserve historical
and cultural materials pertaining to the Philipstown
area, the Hudson Highlands, and Putnam County, while
both looking back to the nineteenth century and forward
into the twentieth, they initially concentrated on the
assemblage of information related to many county families,
the compilation of a list of local Civil War veterans,
and a study of the milestones on the Putnam County segment
of the New York-to-Albany Post Road. During these early
years, the members met in private homes where objects
collected by the society were stored, as well as in
libraries where they held special programs.
In 1960, with funds from the estate
of a longtime supporter and noted writer Laura Spencer
Porter Pope (1907-1957), the society acquired the Foundry
School building built in about 1830, enlarged in the
1860s, and used for the education of the Foundry's teenage
apprentices as well as its employees' children. In 1971,
a wing was added to house the society's holdings related
to the West Point Foundry. Since the establishment of
this museum, the society's members, many of them extraordinarily
informed about the history of the Highlands and the
county, have continued to dedicate their time and talents
as docents, researchers, and educators.
Today, the museum is owned by a not-for-profit
coporation under the oversight of the Department of
Education of the State of New York. Governed by a board
of trustees composed mostly of local residents accomplished
mostly in business and the professions, the museum is
staffed by an executive director, a curator, an education
director, and administrative assistant, and a part-time
computer consultant.
The purpose of the society is to collect
and preserve historical and cultural materials pertaining
to the Philipstown area, the West Point Foundry, and
Putnam County, and make these materials available to
the public. To fulfill this mission, the society maintains
and administers the Foundry School Museum, archives,
a library of genealogical records; provides regulated
public access to its collections; and plans, develops,
and presents informational and educational programs
for the public.
The West Point Foundry collection
of artifacts, documents, photographs, and blueprints
is central to the Mission of the Putnam County Historical
Society and Foundry School Museum. The collection of
documents began in the early years of the Society before
there was a Museum building. Chartered in 1908, meetings
of the Board of Directors, members and volunteers were
held in individuals' homes and later in the Butterfield
Library, where some cabinets were dedicated to the growing
collection. In 1960 the Foundry School, built in 1830
for the Foundry apprentices, was purchased by the Society
as a facility for the historical collections and eventually
as the Museum. The collection of furnishings, china,
glass, photographs, paintings from members and friends
and especially artifacts and documents from the Foundry,
gifts from its former management and workers' descendants,
began in earnest.
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The West Point Foundry was built in
1817 as an iron casting business for ordnance and domestic
production. The primary incentive for such a business
rose from the realization that during the recent War
of 1812, the United States military was drastically
short of the cannon/shot and rifles. The West Point
Foundry’s role at least in part was derived from
the government’s desire to provide a more secure
ordnance production. The site selected was Cold Spring,
New York because of its access to the Hudson River and
its proximity to other iron businesses in the area .
A second shop, the New York Shop, located in Manhattan,
was the accessory business to the Foundry.
The foundry throughout its operation
produced domestic hardware, engines for ships, locomotives,
machines for factories, an iron lighthouse, canal equipment
and ordnance. Under the supervision of Robert P. Parrott,
the developer of the Parrott Gun, the ordnance production
by the foundry became acclaimed as an important determinant
in the success of the Union winning the Civil War in
1865.
At the end of the Civil War the Foundry
began to decline due to the reduction of orders from
the military and competition from a developing industry,
the Steel Industry. The foundry was purchased by the
Cornell brothers in 1897. Cornell was famed for their
production of machines for sugar production and factories
of similar means. The Foundry finally closed in 1914.
The Foundry site then housed the Astoria
Silk Works until a fire closed all operations at the
site. The Deuterium Corporation (1960), a Hilton resort
developer, while unable to use the site, did open the
door for a preservation process and was instrumental
in having the site placed on the National Register of
Historic Places. |
