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"A Village Born Of Iron"
"A Long Road Ended"
(Part 8 Of 8)
Receivership of the West Point Foundry, c. 1884, turned infamously into dreaded bankruptcy at the conclusion of a four or five year period of struggling to stay viable. 1889 was fast proving the darkest moment in foundry history. Whether the plant was capable of continuing to produce while under the restraint of having gone broke (as is standard practice today) appears unknown in local foundry literature. Assuming the factory was indeed capable of pressing forward against great odds, although to a far lesser degree, doing so would have at least given Cold Spring a momentary respite from the reality of the valiant works going under completely.
Buoying up the flagging spirits of the village, another iron foundry establishment, under the pennant of J. B. and J. M. Cornell, purchased the West point foundry works, c. 1897, eight years following the senior plant having gone belly up. Such a revival would surely absorb some of the workers at the former West Point works, although many, out of necessity, had sought employment outside the village during the eight year drought of idleness. Yet the Cornell firm would assure many families the continuity of living, working and trading in the still uncertain hamlet. Then---twelve years later---the end of everything. Cornell closed up shop for good. Cold Spring fell silent.
Yet there existed an inbred determination to assure Cold Spring’s survival, regardless of the death knell having tolled over the foundry site. Cold Spring, through the perception of most residing there, had always been a sort of rustic Shangri-La, an aesthetically compelling rural area unapproached by threats of unnatural commercialism, while encased eternally in the strength of its shadowed hills and the promise of uninterrupted life from the river passing by its very door. When one would sit down and really think about it, things weren’t all that bad in the little village.
Though jolted alarmingly, economically and socially, by closure of both foundries, all was not lost. The railroad, now six decades old in this area of
the Hudson Valley, would doubtlessly provide employment for that notable percentage of local foundrymen who now lay idle. Quarries, not only those just outside Cold Spring, but others scattered along both shores of the Hudson, would hire many a displaced foundry worker. Brickyards as well, along river’s edge, would gladly accommodate an unemployed foundryman, as would any nearby village or town in search of laborers, carpenters, masons, mechanics and the like.
What remains on the floor of the whispering ravine are disheveled remnants of not only a scattered semblance of foundations that once supported plainly architectured shops, but of an era in industrial America, a portion of which was impressed ever so deeply on the consciousness of Cold Spring. Where today trees and tangled brush of every ilk shoulder each flank of the secluded glen, there was merciless and total depletion of such vegetation, here, and for miles around. Charcoal(wooden gold) for year upon year was in insatiable daily demand in the foundry. Trees and robust brush were an only source from which could be satisfied such voracious appetites. Uncountable chunks of decades old slag punctuate the ravine’s base from end to end, mutely testifying to the raw and awesome energy once in such powerful domination at the treasured site. A solitary 1865 brick building, its remains skeletal and unsure, stands self esteemed against time’s ravages, lording over the now placid, less strenuous brook gliding pleasurably past its front entrance. This administration structure peers daily, through glassless windows, down upon scurrying ghosts of hundreds of men cursing the hardened soil and blustery machines that had branded them slaves, some seventy years earlier.
A new page in local history is being turned regarding the West Point Foundry. Some while ago the environmental/conservation agency, "Scenic Hudson," acquired the foundry site. By so doing assurance has been established that such noble ground be preserved for what it is --- a registered historical landmark dedicated to the memory of having been dramatically associated with the Industrial Revolution in this country and in the village of Cold Spring. Scenic Hudson, by its presence at the foundry site, is giving witness to the validity and imperishableness of such a locally sacred monument.
Entrusted in those of Scenic Hudson’s stature, and in those individual preservationists, should be an unquestioned determination to protect from further injury or destruction such an historic prize as is the West Point Foundry site. The West Point Foundry story can never pass away as long as an unbridled commitment to its preservation and suggested partial restoration is carried forth vigorously and with feeling. Only then will the ghostly ruins of what was once an enormously spirited and fertile manufacturing giant take on renewed and hallowed stature and respect.
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