1886 Mine Falls Gatehouse

The Mine Falls Gatehouse is a structure in Mine Falls Park in Nashua, New Hampshire. It was built by the Nashua Manufacturing Company to regulate water flow from the mill yard in 1886. The company relied heavily on waterflow to provide power to their mill.

The Basics

The Nashua Manufacturing Company received a charter to make cloth, and trade near the Nashua River. Three miles from where the company's mills were being built, a dam was being constructed at Mine Falls, and a power canal was hand-dug under the supervision of James Baldwin. His idea was to change the course of the water from the river, through the guard gates, and into the canal. By the time the water reached the mills it had enough velocity to turn the waterwheels under the building.

It was constructed during the presidency of Grover Cleveland. At the time it was a state of the art improvement over the smaller gates that once occupied the canal. A Lowell contractor, L.F. Kittrege, hired men to build five new lift gates that would be protected by the brick walls of the gatehouse.

The gatehouse along with the dam and canal are a part of the Nashua Manufacturing Company Historic District and are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Unlike many of the buildings in this register, the gatehouse was built for practicality, not beauty. Its interior acts as containment for machinery that reflects the transition from hydro power to electric power.

Decline

During the Great Depression construction of new commercial buildings came to a stop. With changing manufacturing practices, many companies closed or headed to the South or to other countries where workers could be hired for less money. Nashua Manufacturing Company was not one of these who moved. It finally closed in 1948. This left a great deal of Nashua’s working-class without employment, and helped cause the closing of other Nashua businesses, including the Nashua Dodgers baseball team in 1949. Unfortunately that was not the last of the devastating economic changes downtown suffered, only the first.

See also

*Gatehouse

References

*http://www.city-data.com/us-cities/The-Northeast/Nashua-History.html (Decline)
*http://www.studenthistoric.org/About_Gatehouse.htm (The Basics)
*http://www.nashuahistory.com/site/nashuahistory.htm