Skip to content
The Forge LedgerWorking iron, and the iron already standing

Section 03 · Heritage

Heritage: the ironwork already standing

Burden Iron Works, the Watervliet Arsenal cast iron building, the Rensselaer plates of the USS Monitor, Albert Paley at the Capitol and the Mastermyr chest.

Illustrative image: a nineteenth century cast iron building facade with fluted columns, photographed from the street in flat light.
Illustrative image. No photograph on this site documents a real place, building, object or person.

The stretch of the Hudson between Albany and Troy was, for about seventy years, one of the densest concentrations of iron making in the United States. Horseshoes, railroad spikes, the plates of an ironclad, valves that ended up in the Panama Canal. Most of the works are gone, some of the buildings are not, and one of the best pieces of contemporary architectural ironwork in the country hangs in the State Capitol. This section is a guide to what survived.

In this section

  1. Illustrative image: a long iron framed industrial building with repeating arched bays and small paned windows in flat light.

    The Watervliet Arsenal cast iron building

    A building delivered as a kit of iron parts, on the oldest continuously active arsenal in the United States.

  2. Illustrative image: a nineteenth century brick industrial office building with arched windows, seen across an empty lot.

    Burden Iron Works: a horseshoe every second

    For half a century the shoes on a large share of the horses in the United States were punched out in south Troy.

  3. Illustrative image: a dark oak toolchest with iron fittings displayed in a museum case, hand tools laid out beside it.

    The Mastermyr chest: a toolbox from about 1000

    A single waterlogged chest carries more information about early medieval smithing than any manuscript.

  4. Illustrative image: forged steel gates with sweeping asymmetric scrollwork set into a stone archway in a public building.

    Albert Paley and the Senate chamber gates

    The most ambitious forged ironwork in New York State hangs in a corridor most visitors walk straight past.

  5. Illustrative image: a thick riveted iron plate with rows of heavy dome headed rivets, weathered and streaked with rust.

    Troy iron and the building of the USS Monitor

    An ironclad went from contract to launch in a hundred and one days, and the men who supplied its iron owned the works next door.

  6. Illustrative image: a brick industrial building with large windows on a quiet Troy street, still in active use.

    Ross Valve: a Troy foundry since 1879

    Ross Valve has made water flow control valves in Troy, New York, since 1879, and the sixth generation of the founding family still owns and operates the company.

Every page in this section is written against the reference page on shop tips and tools, and two neighbouring sections extend it: Craft and Tools.