Early history North Adams was first settled in 1745 during
King George's War, when the most western of a line of defensive forts was built along the bank of the
Hoosic River, and occupied by Massachusetts militiamen and their families. During the war,
Canadian and Native American forces laid
siege to Fort Massachusetts and 30 prisoners were taken to
Quebec; half died in captivity. In 1747
Fort Massachusetts was rebuilt with improved defenses, but was never attacked again. In a period of peace following the
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, many of the soldiers who had been garrisoned at the fort turned to farming instead by opting to each take a 190-acre package of nearby land in lieu of back-pay in the nearby township of West Hoosac (now known as
Williamstown). The North Adams Women's Club began raising funds in 1895 to reconstruct the fort as a memorial site. It was dedicated in 1933 and operated as a historical tourist site until the 1960s. The 1933 Fort's replica chimney is located at the rear of the Central Markets Supermarket that opened at the site in 1960 and closed in 2016 as a Price Chopper Supermarket. The historic site was conveyed to the City of North Adams by the Golub family in 2017. The town was incorporated separately from Adams in 1878, and reincorporated as a city in 1895. The city is named in honor of
Samuel Adams, a leader in the
American Revolution, signer of the
Declaration of Independence, and
governor of Massachusetts. Manufacturing began in the city before the
Revolutionary War, largely because the confluence of the Hoosic River's two branches provided
water power for small-scale industry. By the late 1700s and early 1800s, businesses included wholesale
shoe manufacturers; a
brick yard; a
saw mill;
cabinet-makers; hat manufacturers;
machine shops for the construction of mill machines;
marble works; wagon and sleigh-makers; and an
ironworks, which provided the
pig iron for
armor plates on the
Civil War ship, the
Monitor. Expansion westwards started with the creation of three mill villages,
Blackinton in 1821, Greylock in 1846 and
Braytonville in 1832, located to take advantage of the Hoosac River's water power. The 1850 census marked the official shift of the town from agriculture to industry, since more factory workers than farmers now resided in the town. In 1870 the use of Chinese
strikebreakers from
California to break the
North Adams strike at the Sampson Shoe Factory (today part of the Mass MoCA complex) was an important step in the movement of Chinese from the west coast to the east coast, resulting in east coast
Chinatowns in the United States. On a national scale, the North Adams strike became known as the primary trigger to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act by the U.S. Congress in 1882. North Adams was also the headquarters for building the
Hoosac Tunnel starting in 1851 and completed in 1874, adding an east–west connection to Boston and Albany to the existing 1842 rail connection to New York. Prior to that time, inter-regional travel was limited to weekly stagecoaches from Albany and Greenfield.
MASS MoCA (MASS MoCA), formerly Arnold Print Works and a facility of Sprague Electronics After Sprague closed, business and political leaders in North Adams sought ways to re-use the vast complex.
Williams College Museum of Art director
Thomas Krens, who would later become Director of the
Guggenheim, was looking for space to exhibit large works of contemporary art that would not fit in conventional museum galleries. When mayor
John Barrett III (serving 1984–2009) suggested the vast Marshall Street complex as a possible exhibition site, the idea of creating a contemporary arts center in North Adams began to take shape. The campaign to build support for the proposed institution, which would serve as a platform for presenting contemporary art and developing links to the region's other cultural institutions, began in earnest. The Massachusetts legislature announced its support for the project in 1988. Subsequent economic upheaval threatened the project, but broad-based support from the community and the private sector, which pledged more than $8 million, ensured that it moved forward. The eventual proposal used the scale and versatility of the industrial spaces to link the facility's past and its new life as the country's largest center for contemporary visual and performing arts. Since it opened, the
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) has been part of a larger economic transformation in the region based on cultural, recreational, and educational offerings. North Adams has become home for several new restaurants, contemporary art galleries, and cultural organizations. In addition, once-shuttered area factories and mills have been rehabilitated as lofts for artists to live and work in. ==Geography==