Great Falls And The Silk City
New Jersey’s Paterson is the nation’s oldest planned industrial city — depend on who you ask. But it has fallen on hard times since the once-booming silk industry there declined in the latter half of the 20th century. Much of the industry in this city of 150,000 has since left, but with the help of a local CDC there, as well as corporate and community partners, a geological attraction once envisioned by Alexander Hamilton as something that could be harnessed for industrial might, is fully protected, and being prepared for a makeover.
The following is a preview of a report to appear in the Spring 2009 issue of Shelterforce.
It’s early February and the air temperature hovers in the low teens—never mind the windchill that could only be tolerable to a Midwesterner. But despite the cold temperatures, the Great Falls, a geological oasis in these urban environs located in New Jersey’s Passaic County, just 12 miles west of New York City, flows aggressively into the Passaic River at the foot of the New Jersey Highlands, offering a glimpse of the industrial powerhouse that was once the city of Paterson.
The Great Falls, located in one of the country’s most economically distressed cities (known as the Silk City because of the thriving 20th century silk industry here), was first eyed by Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury Secretary, as the “spark that would ignite a new form of industrial productivity,” thus “adding wealth, independence, and economic security to a fledgling democratic nation,” according to Michael Powell, Vice President of Planning Policy and Development for the Paterson-based New Jersey Community Development Corporation, in an article in the forthcoming Spring 2009 issue of Shelterforce.
Matthew Brian Hersh is a New Jersey native who joined Shelterforce magazine in April 2008 as associate editor. For five years prior to coming to Shelterforce, he was editor of a central New Jersey newspaper and is a longtime freelance writer working mostly in the nonprofit sector. A graduate of Rutgers University, Matthew has worked for the New Jersey State Legislature and was communications director for a nonprofit transportation organization. He was named NHI/Shelterforce senior editor in April 2009. E-mail Matthew at mhersh@nhi.org.
National Housing Institute
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