Architectural Context, Integrity & Significance
The I.A. Hall Mills is a four-story brick industrial complex situated on a 1.5 acres bounded by Fulton St. to the south, Harrison Street to the north, and Summer Street to the west, and Straight St. to the east. The site is characterized by two colossal twin brick mills arranged east to west in parallel with a boiler house/power plant building between them. The massive four-story mills are approx. 200 ft. long, constructed c1899-1910s. The structures are utilitarian in design and unadorned except for corbelling along the eaves and gables. Some primary architectural features are the repetitive symmetry of uninterrupted, stepped buttresses and tall, narrow segmental arched windows that span between the buttresses without any spacing on either side. These impressive structures are excellent examples of early twentieth-century heavy timber mill construction in their materials, design, massing and utilitarian styling.
Historic Significance, Context & Association
Isaac Hall was a Paterson native who erected a small brick mill on 30-32 Division Street in 1860 specializing in the production of all mill supplies, such as "reeds, harnesses, lingoes, mails, shuttles, loom cards, lacing, general weaver's supplies and hand tools necessary to rig a textile mill and keep it operating." His son, also named Isaac, took up the business in the 1880s after attending a local business college and serving in the US Navy. For the next several decades, I. A. Hall expanded his father's reputation and his business became known nationally for the quality and reliability of his mill supply products. Hall expanded his mill supply operations on Division Street during 1880-1889 and his prosperity increased substantially. During the 1890s, he purchased lots along Fulton Street, just several blocks from the Division Street properties, and constructed the first of the two tenant mills, oriented along the length of Fulton Street. The second mill, parallel to the first along Harrison Street, was completed prior to 1915, and a boiler house was constructed between them.
Hall constructed at least one other
tenant mill in Paterson, and remained in business of mill supplies well into
the early twentieth century, maintaining a wide-spread reputation as a leader
among the best of textile trade. Hall circulated himself among Paterson's
business class elite at the period of the city's most prosperous period, and
like other prominent peers such as Nathan Barnert and Joseph Congdon who
capitalized in other support industries and but not in textile manufacturing
directly, invested in real estate ventures creating space for tenants to set up
a textile shop. To this end Hall's role
in the Paterson silk industry was significant in the continued prosperity of the
trade in Paterson into the early twentieth century as business models and
technologies changed substantially.
References
The Paterson Daily and Weekly Guardian, "History and Institutions: City of Paterson, N.J.," 1898.
Shriner, Charles A., "Paterson, New Jersey," 1890.
Department of City of Paterson Survey Community Development, 1987.
Archimede, Gianfranco, Paterson Historic Mills Group Municipal Historic Site Designations Staff Opinion of Eligibility, 2012.
Hyde, E B Atlas of Passaic County, New Jersey, 1877.
Robinson, E. Atlas of the City of Paterson, New Jersey, 1884.
Robinson, E. Atlas of the City of Paterson and Haledon, New Jersey, 1899.
Mueller, A. H. Atlas of the City of Paterson, New Jersey, 1915.
Sanborn Map Company Insurance, Maps of Paterson, New Jersey, 1915.
Sanborn Map Company Insurance, Maps of Paterson, New Jersey, 1931.