While largely leaving the building exteriors as they were, Sprague made extensive modifications to the interiors to convert the former textile mill into an electronics plant. Later that year, the Sprague Electric Company bought the site. Despite decades of success, falling cloth prices and the lingering effects of the great Depression forced Arnold Print Works to close its Marshall Street operation in 1942, consolidating to smaller facilities in neighboring Adams, Massachusetts. By the end of the 1890s, 25 of the 26 buildings in the present-day MASS MoCA complex had been constructed, and by 1905 Arnold Print Works employed some 3,200 people, as one of the leading producers of printed textiles in the world. Large government contracts to supply fabric for the Union Army ensured that the business prospered, and during the next four decades Arnold Print Works became the largest employer in North Adams. Arnold and Company established itself on a portion of the site and installed the latest equipment for printing cloth. By the late 1700s and early 1800s businesses at or near the site included: wholesale shoe manufacturers a brick yard a saw mill cabinet-makers hat manufacturers machine shops for the construction of mill machines marble works wagon- and sleigh-makers and an ironworks, which later forged armor plates for the Civil War ship, the Monitor. Manufacturing began on and around the land where MASS MoCA sits before the Revolutionary War, as its location at the confluence of the two branches of the Hoosic River was ideal for the diverse, small-scale industries of colonial times. Colonial Period (late 1700s–mid 1800s)Įuropean colonizers began settling in present-day North Adams in the mid 1700s. The Wabanaki Confederacy, also known as The People of the Dawnland, are indigenous to the lands with the English placenames Maine, Vermont, northwestern Massachusetts, and parts of Canada, and continue to reside in these areas. The Mohican people built their homes near rivers like the Hoosick, where they would be close to food, water and transportation. Despite tremendous hardship in being forcibly relocated from these lands by Dutch, English, and US colonizers, today the Mohican community resides in Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. MASS MoCA rests on the ancestral homelands of the Muhheaconneok or Mohican people (People of the Waters That Are Never Still) and the Wabanaki peoples. Bridges, viaducts, elevated walkways, and red brick facades lend a distinct architectural ambiance to the complex, which throughout its history has been a place for innovation and fabrication using the most advanced knowledge and technology of the day. Listed in the National Historic Register, the site’s 26 buildings form an elaborate system of interlocking courtyards and passageways rich with historical association. The 16 acres of grounds on the Hoosic River in North Adams, Massachusetts, encompass a vast complex of 19th-century mill buildings and occupy nearly one-third of the city’s downtown business district. In the microcosm of this one factory-campus, it is possible to trace the arc of industrialization and post-industrialization of New England, and indeed the world. The history of MASS MoCA’s site spans centuries of social, economic, industrial, and architectural change.

Evolutioon of army of two masks