Erie Canal (Original), Locks 37 & 38, 84 North Mohawk Street, Cohoes, Albany County, NY

See also HAER NY-5, Harmony Manufacturing Company, Mill No. 3, and HAER NY-9, Cohoes Company Power Canal System, for related documentation.

Significance: The state of New York built the Erie Canal between 1817 and 1825 to open the western part of the state and the Great Lakes to settlement and commercial development. Locks 37 and 38 formed part of a series of nineteen locks needed to carry the canal around the Cohoes Falls, a cataract on the Mohawk River some 3 miles above its junction with the Hudson River. After completion of an enlarged Erie Canal along a new line through Cohoes in 1842, the original right of way was conveyed to the Cohoes Company and incorporated into the expanding system that supplied water power to manufacturers throughout the growing community.

The Erie Canal catalyzed commerce, industry, and population growth in Cohoes, as it did in places all along its path. Although little survives of Locks 37 and 38, portions now serve as foundations for a row of industrial buildings that demonstrate Cohoes' expansion as a mill town through the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Largely functional and quotidian, these buildings and the canal beneath them were modified as needed over time to maintain their usefulness, and the resulting site is an accretion at the center of a larger manufacturing complex where the paths of a few leading nineteenth-century engineers and capitalists crossed those of thousands of predominately young immigrant mill workers.

The power-canal system was abandoned after 1915 and the adjacent mills closed in the 1930s. Today, the remains of Locks 37 and 38 and the building above them lie within the Harmony Mill Historic District, created in 1987, and the Harmony Mills National Historic Landmark District, designated in 1999.

Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N1255

Survey number: HAER NY-337

Building/structure dates: 1821-1823 Initial Construction

Building/structure dates: 1853 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: 1858 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: 1864 Subsequent Work

Building/structure dates: after. 1970- before. 1979 Subsequent Work

National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 78003151

locks hydraulic facilities canals textile mills waterworks pump houses storehouses stonework tunnels textile industry water power manufacturing transportation cohoes ny erie erie canal original locks mohawk north mohawk street cohoes albany albany county new york jami babb anthony n brady justine christianson city of cohoes joshua r clarke cohoes company cohoes gas light company cohoes power and light company draper corporation philo b ferguson emile geyelin harmony mill company peter harmony michael r harrison duncan hay historic american engineering record john b jervis uri kaufman kinderhook and garner and co steve lackmann edward learned walter lipka christopher marston john mcenerny saco lowell company james slade peter stewart ed tremblay david h van auken sylvester van der mark stephen van rensselaer john watson canvass white hugh white alfred wild craig williams photo ultra high resolution high resolution manufacturing plants library of congress national register of historic places railway photo archive

1969 - 1980

Library of Congress

http://www.loc.gov/

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