Albany Felt Company Complex

Albany Felt Company Complex
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Main building, south elevation, 2015
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Location	Menands and Albany, New York
Coordinates	42°40′38″N 73°44′0″W / 42.67722°N 73.73333°W / 42.67722; -73.73333
Area	14.45 acres (5.85 ha)
Built	1902 (1902), 1910, 1920s, 1938, 1941, 1954.[2]
Architect	Lockwood, Greene and Company[2]
Architectural style	Neoclassical, Colonial Revival
NRHP reference No.	14000001[1]
Added to NRHP	February 14, 2014

The former Albany Felt Company Complex, now The Lofts at One Broadway,

An original decorative cast iron fence with brick poles runs along all the property lines save the east, which uses a modern chainlink fence. It is accompanied by regularly spaced mature trees along the Broadway side. There are entrances from Broadway near the north and south ends of the property. The latter has a small gatehouse.^[2]

Within the fence are three buildings. The large main building, with several wings, runs from the north to south along the length of the property. To its east, in the southeast of the property, are two smaller warehouses, the northern one larger than the other.^[2][4]

South of the main building, within Albany rather than Menands, is a small pond about the width of that end of the building. It is landscaped and surrounded with several concrete paths; a driveway curves around it from the parking lot to the main entrance and back. To its south is an unpaved parking lot. Roadways leading east from it circle the east side of the property, passing the warehouses and leading to other parking lots and eventually the lot near the entrance at the north end. Another pond, mostly rectangular in shape with an additional fence around it, is located in the southern portion of the space on the main building's west amidst the lawns around it.^[2][4]

Main building

The main building extends 602 feet (183 m) to the north from the south wing. Its main block was built at different times of three separate similarly sized sections; they appear as one single section today. The earliest is the largest, just north of the southern section and perpendicular to it. It is a three-story structure of load-bearing brick walls, 2 feet (61 cm) thick at the base and narrowing to 16 inches (41 cm) at the third story, with a flat roof covered in polyvinyl chloride, 85 feet (26 m) wide at the south end and 170 feet (52 m) at the north. In addition to the southern wing, there is a small L-shaped addition on the east side just north of it.^[2]

On both east and west side, its

Entrance is provided by modern glass and steel doors located in the center of the first floor's south elevation. Above it is a marble entablature with "Albany International" engraved on it. The same brown marble serves as a water table around the base of the pavilion.^[6]

Windows are the same shape and size as those on the main block but with just four panes; a cast stone stringcourse separates the two stories. Two large

All other bays on the first floor are set with 12-over-12 double-hung sash windows with stone sills and splayed brick lintels with keystones. The second story has eight-over-eight double-hung sash in every bay. Above it is a cast stone stringcourse, frieze and modillioned stone cornice which serves as the sill line for the third story.^[2][6]

Windows on the third story have the same treatment as those below. A plain stone cornice divides them from the similarly treated fourth-story windows, which rise from a plain stone course, the coping that once topped the parapet before the story was built.^[2][6]

The three-bay west elevation continues the same window treatments seen on the south. On the north, a framed bay window is along the first floor opposite the entrance portico. The four bays to its west have two larger windows flanking two smaller ones. Window spacing on the two floors above is similarly irregular; the bay east of center on the second story has a window with sidelights.^[7]

On the east, the wing is five bays wide. It also projects a bay out from the tower. Treatments on this wing are identical to those on the west, with the exception of the stone courses on the upper stories, all of which are plain and flush with the facade.^[2]

External image
Photo of east wing, south facade

The southeast addition is also three stories high, although not to the height of the main block. It similarly has a flat roof. The main entrance is in the third bay from the east on the six-bay southern facade. It is a modern steel and glass door sheltered by a front-gabled metal roof supported by two square brick pillars.

Fenestration on the first story otherwise consists of 18-pane rectangular casement in the bays on the first floor east of the entrance, and double versions of those windows with the lower 12 panes opening hopper style on the west. The second story has 12-over-12 double-hung sash with four-pane transoms; above it the third story has 8-over-12 double-hung sash with four-pane transoms. At the roofline is another eave with brackets.

Interior

The south wing contains former offices, now being converted into apartments, on both sides of both wings with a central hallway, on all floors. The sections to the north have open interiors with 15-foot (4.6 m) ceilings. They are floored with 4–6-inch-thick (10–15 cm) tongue and groove thin strip wooden planks. From them three rows of wooden pillars (two rows in the northeast section), divide the section into four internal bays, connecting to exposed wooden joists on the ceiling.^[2]

Warehouses

External images
Older warehouse
Newer warehouse

There are two

Just to its north is a flat-roofed square five-story brick structure, the other warehouse. It has entrances, both overhead and normal, on all its facades. On the north elevation two vertical bays of windows rise the full height, complemented on the south by two large loading dock doors. A stone course separates the first floor from those above. Inside it has concrete floors with mushroom columns.^[2]

Other structures and objects

At the south entrance is a gatehouse. It is an octagonal one-story brick structure with a metallic roof. Since it was built in the later 20th century, it is the only one of the four buildings on the property considered non-contributing to the National Register listing.^[2]

There are also four small pumphouses on the west side of the mill, surrounding the fire hydrants built there at the same time as the factory. They are considered contributing structures to the listing, as are the ponds on the south (the only significant resource on the property in the city of Albany) and west of the building. The fence around the western pond is, however, of more modern construction, and is the only other non-contributing resource on the property besides the gatehouse.^[2]

History

For most of its existence, the history of the complex has been the history of the Albany Felt Company.

1895–1901: Founding

Three partners, including Parker Corning, later a U.S. Congressman and uncle of Albany's long-serving 20th-century mayor Erastus Corning, started the Albany Felt Company in 1895 when the services of one of the industry's best felt makers, Duncan Fuller, became available after the plant he had been working at burned down. Felt was a thriving industry in Albany at the time since the city was a center of papermaking in late 19th century America due to the proximity of the Adirondack Mountains and their expanses of evergreen softwood forests. The textile material was necessary to clothe the Fourdrinier machines that had dominated industrial papermaking since the middle of the century, bracing the paper rolls and helping to dry them.^[2]

With an initial investment of $40,000, the partners hired Fuller and leased space on Thacher Street in North Albany, almost a mile (1.6 km), south of the current buildings' location. Fuller had recently patented a new method of making felt, and within a year the company had 36 employees. While there were several other industrial felt makers in the country providing product to paper mills at the time, Albany Felt had the advantage of a location close to a major source of wood, deep cash reserves, and a skilled superintendent. Before the turn of the century it had done well enough to hire a salesman who visited mills all over the Northeast.^[2]

Along with the paper industry as a whole, the company grew. By 1901 its sales had increased fourfold. The company realized it had to expand its facilities to keep up with demand. Albany Felt bought five acres (2.0 ha) just north of the city line in what was then part of the town of Watervliet.^[2]

1902–1920: Construction of plant

The new site was, like the original one, close to major transportation routes such as the Watervliet Turnpike, complete with

Later this was supplemented by the one on the south end. There were sometimes dryer fires to put out, but no major conflagrations since those could be extinguished before they spread far. The ponds were converted into decorative ponds in later years when the installation of a sprinkler system made them unnecessary.^[2]

By 1910 it was necessary to add more production space, so Albany Felt bought more land and commissioned Lockwood to design the first extension, a northern wing that doubled the available space. In 1918 the company's executives decided to move their offices to the new plant from the original Thacher Street location. They commissioned from Lockwood, Greene a design for an architecturally sympathetic administrative wing, on the southwest corner of the plant. At the time only two stories were needed.^[2]

The rapid growth of the paper industry had led to

In 1941, the U.S. entered World War II, increasing demand for paper products. Albany Felt had reached a valuation of $5 million. Corning, in his last years as president, had a new five-story warehouse built on the site of the old dye house to store raw materials.^[2]

1942–1954: Completion of facility

Corning died two years later, and his cousin Lewis Parker took over as company president. He oversaw continued growth and investment after the war. In 1948, another two-story office wing was built on the southeast of the building, complementing the administrative wing opposite.^[2]

By 1950, the company was worth $14 million. Two years later, it established a Canadian subsidiary to handle its increasing international growth. The last major addition to the facility came in 1954, when the southeast wing was topped off with two stories, bringing it even with the southwest wing and giving the building its present form.^[2]

1955–present: Departure of Albany Felt and remodeling

After that, the company's expansions and new construction would take place elsewhere as it increased its presence both in other regions of the United States and overseas. In 1969, reflecting its acquisition of the Wisconsin-based Appleton Wire Works and Swedish felt maker Nordiska Maskinfilt, the company changed its name to Albany International and began diversifying, producing other materials for industrial use besides felt. Its headquarters remained in Albany, however, and some improvements were made to the interior, from adding a research laboratory in 1966 to an additional stair a decade later. In the late 1970s, the headquarters functions were moved to space in an office park nearby^[2]

During the 1980s the

Following those renovations, most production operations were moved out to a new plant in East Greenbush starting in 1988. This allowed the building to once again be used as the company's headquarters. Most later renovations to the building focused on optimizing its use as office space.^[2]

By the early 21st century, with the company's operations increasingly international and concerned with materials besides industrial felt, even the need for headquarters staff was less evident. PrimaLoft, a division that made insulation for use in outdoor clothing, established its own headquarters in the southeast wing after being spun off.^[8]

In the early 2010s, all associations between the building and the company that had occupied it for over a century ended. The last felts were produced there in 2011.^[9] Albany International moved its headquarters to Rochester, New Hampshire, where its growing aerospace composites division was already based, in 2013.^[2] PrimaLoft, too, moved to larger headquarters in nearby Latham, that same year.^[8]

A local developer, Uri Kaufman, who had already converted

• Architecture of Albany, New York
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Albany, New York
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Albany County, New York

References

External links

• The Lofts at One Broadway website
• Albany Menands Self Storage, business that occupies the north end of the building today