By the 1870s, Harmony Mills had national significance as one of the largest and most technologically advanced cotton factories in the United States, and before 1870 no single mill operation in America equaled it in scale or productivity. The Harmony Mills Company advanced technology, developed innovations in factory operations, and created an entire corporate community on Harmony Hill, including factory buildings, housing, shops, and places for education and recreation for workers and their families. Company ownership of the complex permitted a high level of control over the workforce, predominantly women and children who also lived in company housing, yet workers protested intolerable working conditions, most notably in the labor strikes of 1880-1882. The original mill was built in 1838, one year after the incorporation of the Harmony Mills Manufacturing Company, along the enlarged Erie Canal beside Lock #16; it was four stories high, 165 feet long, and 50 feet wide, with wheelhouses at each end where enclosed waterwheels powered the textile machinery, and with tenements across the canal for the superintendent and mill workers. From 1837 to 1850 the corporation was never financially successful, but after the original stockholders sold the property in 1850 to Garner and Company of New York City and placed the Cohoes operation under Robert Johnston, he and his son David John Johnston spent the next 30 years transforming Harmony Mills into a sophisticated manufacturing complex producing cotton print cloth. Under their management, Harmony Mill #1 was attached to the original 1837 mill, Mill #2 was completed in sections in 1857 and 1866 in the Second Empire style, and Mill #3 rose as a 1,185-foot-long, five-story industrial building with decorative Second Empire features, a bronze statue of Thomas Garner in its central tower, and Boyden turbines whose high-output power helped place production capacity far ahead of competitors. As the cotton textile industry became less dependent on waterpower and moved to other regions, the Harmony Mills complex of housing and factories was sold in 1937.
