Manufacturing buildings in Massachusetts : the legacy and the future

Abstract

Manufacturing buildings are found in most towns and cities in Massachusetts. Standing in dominant isolation, or as part of an urban district, their presence is the built testimony to the role manufacturing played in so many lives. Machinists working in the mills produced technical innovations that were exported throughout the world. It is a tribute to the builders of those mills that today people in some of the same buildings are still manufacturing with "high" technology. Yet manufacturing is becoming work that fewer of us are employed to do in our economy. Some compare this to the decline of the farm as a source of livelihood a century ago. The results show up in an unfortunate parallel between unemployed workers and manufacturing space. This thesis started from the proposal that these buildings are a resource that can be modernized for further manufacturing use as part of a community effort to create more jobs. Evaluating the proposal entailed an investigation into the existing market for this type of building, how efforts to expand that market have worked, how existing firms locate their production space, and the changes in design criteria for manufacturing buildings. The proposal contains some implicit values that have been traditional ones in Massachusetts: that older things built well are worth using; and that as a commonwealth if we lose the pride of skilled production, or fail to share it among ourselves, we have lost a legacy that has been ours, and our future will become less certain.