![]() ![]() In 1860, the Arnold brothers, sons of a local farmer, purchased a small existing cotton mill on a peninsula where the Hoosic’s branches met. Light industry first formed along the banks of the Hoosic River, which separates into north and south branches in the town. MASS MoCA’s innovative reuse of an industrial space demonstrates how historic buildings can function within regional economic, social, and cultural revitalization efforts.įrom its origins as a colonial agricultural settlement, North Adams, in the northwestern corner of Massachusetts, developed into an industrial center beginning in the late eighteenth century. Throughout the 1990s, museum professionals, civic leaders from North Adams and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, architects, preservationists, and the residents of North Adams reclaimed the deteriorating collection of vacant factory spaces, warehouses, and administrative buildings and transformed them into the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (known as MASS MoCA), a world-class art museum, performance space, and community cultural center. ![]() Simultaneously, the directors of the nearby Williams College Museum of Art sought a home for its collection of large-scale contemporary art that could not physically (or, often, conceptually) fit within existing museum spaces. Over a dozen empty brick industrial buildings, mostly dating from the late nineteenth century, crumbled as the surrounding city of North Adams sought to redefine itself in the postindustrial age. By the late 1980s, the sprawling campus of the former Arnold Print Works and, later, Sprague Electric Company, sat unused. ![]()
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