Cathedrals of Industry (Exploring the Factories and Infrastructure That Made America)

“This book . . . documents better than any economic historian could some of the enormous changes our economy and our society have been going through.”



—From the foreword by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist

American culture and politics are shot through with nostalgia for the country’s industrial past, a time when we actually made things—physical things, not patterns of bits and bytes. But what did this past actually look like? Photographer Michael L. Horowitz has traveled throughout the Northeast in search of its remnants, both heritage businesses that have survived to the present and the ruins of decommissioned factories and infrastructure. The spaces he takes us inside range from the intimate to the vast—from the last silk flower workshop in New York’s Garment District to Buffalo’s looming grain elevators and the Paterson Great Falls Hydroelectric Plant, in operation since 1914. Horowitz photographs these places with the eye not only of a photographer but of someone who has taken the time to understand their workings in detail—an understanding that is extended to the reader through Jim Holtje’s lively and carefully researched text.

Cathedrals of Industry will appeal to readers with a variety of interests, including history, architecture, engineering, and urban exploration.