A few months shy of 90, Hugo Gardina was happy to play seniority”™s second fiddle to the hammer mill he operated recently at the third annual Old Time Poughkeepsie Industrial Fair.
The water-powered hammer mill dates to the dawn of modern human history, some 10,000 years ago. It operated with its signature “Wham!” in the shadow of high-output, low-watt lights out of “Star Wars,” framing perfectly the region”™s industrial story from the post-Pleistocene into the future.
“It”™s not a contraption,” Gardina said, correcting an errant observation of his hammer mill. “It”™s ”˜La Pela,”™ the crusher.”
Gardina said his father, on duty with the Italian Army in Brazil early in the 20th century, came upon an identical hammer mill in the Amazon rainforest and co-opted the design when he established his farm in Columbia County. Gardina said he has been carting La Pela around to fairs for some 40 years and has never made any money with it. (As a boy he used it to crush rye for pig food.) “My wife says, ”˜Who the hell wants to look at that thing?”™” he said. “But I”™ve had fun doing it.”
He is joined by Joe Magnarella, a retired machinist from Dutchess County who is a blacksmith. He said blacksmithing was key to many old-time endeavors from repairs to horseshoes. “The blacksmith made a lot of things. There was no store to go to for spare parts.”
A hundred feet from Magnarella”™s portable, 1,800-degree furnace, city of Poughkeepsie historian George Lukacs (pronounced Lucas) held aloft the other end of Poughkeepsie”™s technological arc: a bank of light-emitting diodes manufactured in Salt Point by LitGreen, with former city Mayor Nancy Cozean an early principal in the venture and with several successes on its ledger sheets (See HV Biz June 13 for the article).
“With the coming of the Erie and D&H canals” ”“1819 to 1828 ”“ “Poughkeepsie shifted its focus from the Northeast westward to the Ohio Valley,” Lukacs said. “Now, we are again looking west, to the point we are looking all the way to China.”
The city was once the home to abundant manufacturing, including agricultural products, bottles, stoneware, buttons and biscuits.
Lukacs said four yellow fever epidemics in New York City ”“ 1795, 1798, 1803 and 1805 ”“ hugely fueled Poughkeepsie”™s manufacturing base as businesses fled the contagion. Poughkeepsie”™s attractive advantage at the time was its shipbuilding industry; the city built two of the first 11 ships commissioned by the Continental Congress, Lukacs said. “They brought very little with them, fearing contamination. So they brought money with them. New products would be made here.”
Lukacs in his book, “Poughkeepsie, Potters and the Plague” (Arcadia Publishers 2001), pushed the manufacture of stoneware in the city back to the 18th century plagues; previously the industry was thought to have rooted several decades later.
The city is rediscovering its waterfront through multiple efforts that are expected eventually to include an elevator to the Walkway Over the Hudson from the 1683 mill site on the Fallkill Creek that was host to the fair. Lukacs said it is all part of a circle of activity that is now completing itself: from the 17th-century Dutch to 2011.
“Industries like nails, horseshoes, carpeting, chairs, dye works and glass works got industry going here, but they left the waterfront terribly polluted,” he said. “With the evolution of industry, we”™re moving away from that and establishing the green industries based on light, wind and water. That”™s why we”™re here now: to show other industries the Fallkill at Hoffman”™s Mill (still standing) was an early green industry, to show them the possibilities.”
The regional ice industry, however, may have died for good. Details from Lukacs indicate it was a far dirtier industry than a winter”™s day on the river might conjure. Special shovels and toxic chemicals were used to clean the ice of equine urine and feces and the work was low-paying in the extreme. In 1914, from when Lukacs has unearthed a local work manifest, 28 cents per hour was pay for skilled workers and 21 cents was the unskilled hourly wage. A team of those problematic horses fetched 56 cents per hour.
