1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cohoes

COHOES, a city of Albany county, New York, U.S.A., about 9 m. N. of Albany, at the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers. Pop. (1890) 22,509; (1900) 23,910, of whom 7303 were foreign-born; (1910) 24,709. It is served by the New York Central & Hudson River and the Delaware & Hudson railways, by electric lines to Troy and Albany, and by the Erie and Champlain canals. It is primarily a manufacturing city. Hosiery and knit goods, cotton cloth, cotton batting, shoddy, underwear and shirts and collars are the principal products, but there are also extensive valve works and manufactories of pulp, paper and paper boxes, beer, pins and needles, tools and machinery, and sash, doors and blinds. The value of the factory products in 1905 was $10,289,822, of which $4,126,873, or 40.1%, was the value of hosiery and knit goods, Cohoes ranking fifth among the cities of the United States (of 20,000 inhabitants or more) in this industry, and showing a higher degree of specialization in it than any other city in the United States except Little Falls, N.Y. The Falls of the Mohawk, which furnish power for the majority of the manufacturing establishments, are 75 ft. high and 900 ft. broad, a large dam above the falls storing the water, which is conveyed through canals to the mills. Below the falls the river is crossed by two fine iron bridges. The city has a public library, a normal training school and the St Bernard’s (Roman Catholic) Academy. Cohoes was a part of the extensive manorial grant made to Killian Van Rensselaer in 1629 and it was probably settled very soon afterwards. It was incorporated as a village in 1848 and was chartered as a city in 1870.