File:20220508 - 01 - Cohoes, New York - Former company housing on Cataract Street, Harmony Mills Historic District.jpg

English: As seen in May 2022, the streetscape on Cataract Street in Cohoes, New York is characterized by rows of homogeneous three-story brick apartment buildings that were erected in 1853 as part of the second major phase of construction of worker housing at the Harmony Mills factory complex. Founded in 1836 by Peter Harmony with financial backing from wealthy landholder Stephen van Rensselaer, the erstwhile Harmony Manufacturing Company quickly took a foremost place in Cohoes' economy, taking advantage of the hydraulic power of the nearby Cohoes Falls and the transportation artery of the Erie Canal to manufacture and ship to market 1.5 million yards of printed cotton cloth in its first year of operation alone. Nonetheless, it was not until the company's sale to Thomas Garner and Alfred Wild that the mill turned a profit. Under the operation of English-born textile innovator Robert Johnston, the mill was in the midst of an explosive period of expansion at the time these tenements were built: the factory was expanded the same year, doubling its floor space, and the company would soon begin an aggressive campaign of acquiring competitors, eventually gaining it the title of largest cotton mill in the United States and a monopoly on cotton production in the local region. Cotton was manufactured at Harmony Mills until the 1930s, whereupon the mill buildings were subdivided and occupied by a diversity of industrial concerns, the last of which shuttered in 1988. More recently, beginning in the 2000s, the award-winning redevelopment of the complex into luxury loft apartments by developer Uri Kaufman has provided a major shot in the arm to the local economy. The Harmony Mills Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and named a National Historic Landmark in 1999.