Since its early settlement, Madrid was a center for business and industry, and this area was home to a number of businesses including saw and grist mills, a woolen mill, a pants factory, a fly and insect destroyer factory, and a laundry. The first grist and saw mills were built by Seth Roberts and Mr. Clark in 1803. The original mills were destroyed by fire in 1814 while owned by Jarah Meach. Timothy Reed later purchased the property and built a grist and saw mill under one roof. The property burned down in 1856 while owned by Hiram Horton, and the following year a stone grist mill was built opposite the saw mill. The grist mill remained in operation until 1948, and the saw mill burned down for the last time in 1950. As early as 1823, Captain Jesse Goss was running a cloth-dressing mill at this location. The mill remained in the Goss family until the 1860s, when it was operated by Mr. Adolphus Vansickler. The mill used water power to generate electricity for heated irons, though low river levels sometimes left insufficient power to run them. In the early 1900s the building housed the Madrid Electric Light Company, which was incorporated in 1912, and in later years the building was abandoned and remained vacant until torn down. A cloth-making mill built by Alfred Goss in 1833 became the property of the Madrid Woolen Mills in 1893. The Madrid Woolen Mills was a stock company organized for the manufacture of cloth and pants. It employed 30 workers and produced 100 pairs of pants a day. The factory closed in 1916, but reopened four years later under an Ogdensburg business to manufacture nurses' uniforms and hospital gowns. In 1905 the F. Williams Manufacturing Company of Morrisburg, Ontario, bought the Nelson W. Pike store building on the Brooklyn side to produce and distribute Dr. Williams Fly and Insect Destroyer, a product widely used by local farmers for domestic and agrarian pests. John A. Andrew began a laundry business after moving to Madrid in 1894. In 1903 a gasoline tank exploded, injuring Mr. and Mrs. Andrew and burning down the laundry and three other buildings, though Lockwood's carriage shop and the adjoining pants factory were saved by volunteers. The laundry remained in operation until John Andrew's death in 1937. Ruth Goodrow, born in December 1873 and later known as Ruth Gordon Keenan, recalled the woolen mill at the south end of the bridge, the tannery across from it, the gristmill at the northeast end of the bridge, and the sawmill across from the gristmill, remembering the sounds of the looms, the millstones, and the big saw, as well as the sawdust, lumber, and stove wood her brothers brought home.