The Allied Textile Printing Site

The Allied Textile Printing Site is a 7.5-acre part of the Great Falls of Paterson/S.U.M. Historic District, where the drive for the newly established United States to gain economic as well as political independence from Europe led Alexander Hamilton and other influential men in 1791 to charter the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures and harness the natural power of the Great Falls for manufacturing, creating the nation’s first planned industrial development on the banks of the Passaic River. A canal and raceways carried water from above the falls to mills below, and the system grew increasingly complex as more mills were built. At the south end of the site, a terrace provided the first place where water could return to the river and is thought to have been the location of an early sawmill and the miller’s house. By the mid-eighteenth century, the Todd and Raftery's Machine Company stood on the Passaic riverbank, and its larger machine works, later called Todd Mill, included a foundry, blacksmith shops, and support buildings that supplied textile machinery, steam engines, and other manufacturing equipment to Paterson’s mills and to factories across America and the world until the business closed in the mid-1890s. In 1836 Samuel Colt’s Patent Arms Manufacturing Company built the five-story stone Colt Gun Mill to produce newly invented revolving firearms, and the building also housed Christopher Colt, the first man in Paterson to make silk. After gun production ended in 1842, cotton and silk makers moved into the mill, including John Ryle, and the success of silk manufacturing and dyeing spread through the city to mills such as Waverly and Mallory; by 1880 nearly one-third of American silk workers were employed in Paterson, most of them immigrants and many of them women. During the twentieth century, silk weaving and the dyeing and finishing of fabric were Paterson’s primary industries. In 1938 Allied Textile Printers, Inc. was created through the merger of several small to mid-sized textile firms in Paterson, and in the 1960s the Standard Dyeing and Finishing Company was established from its assets and occupied the large dye houses at the south of the complex. Financial problems ended all operations in 1982. On April 1, 2009, President Obama signed the Paterson Great Falls Historical Park Act into law, creating a new National Park Service unit to be managed through a partnership with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the City of Paterson, and other local interests, while the Great Falls National Park designation and a long-term plan for restoration and neighborhood development were intended to encourage private investment and help revitalize Paterson.

Hawthorne, New Jersey · United States