Photo: Related names: Boucher, Jack E Pollock, Richard J Vogel, Ro, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Henry Burden came to Troy from Scotland in the 1820s and took over an iron works along the Wynantskill in South Troy. He patented a machine in 1835 that made horseshoes automatically, and later versions could turn out one shoe a second.
During the Civil War, Burden’s company supplied huge numbers of horseshoes to the Union Army.
The Burden Wheel
To power the works, Burden built an overshot waterwheel about 62 feet across, often described as one of the most powerful waterwheels ever built. It ran from the 1850s until the end of the century. Only the foundations remain today.
The office building
The company’s stone office building, finished in 1881, still stands near the river. It is owned by the Hudson-Mohawk Industrial Gateway, a nonprofit that uses it as a museum and meeting space and runs tours of industrial sites in Troy, Cohoes and Watervliet.
Troy’s iron and steel industry, along with collar making, made it one of the wealthiest cities in the country in the late 1800s. Much of the downtown architecture visitors admire today was paid for with money from those industries.
