09/22/2026
The industrial revolution that occurred across the United States in the latter half of the 1800s created the need for establishments such as the F. J. Curtis Machine Shop, which was located at the corner of Water Street (now West Avenue) and Union Street. According to the sign on the front of the building, this shop manufactured engines and boilers, power and hand pumps, and also sold machine, engine and cylinder oil, as well as gas pipes and fittings. As more industries became mechanized, machine shops prospered by providing skilled labor to fix machines and manufacture the parts needed to make the machines run. Farmers, canal boat captains, railroad workers, and well drillers relied on these early ancestors of the modern tool and die shop for their equipment and parts. Machine shops multiplied into the thousands in the Rochester area during the 1880s and 1890s, and the area became known as a manufacturing hub in the northeast. Area shops produced a variety of patented machines such as Gordon Grain Binder, the Howe Scales, the Cunningham Carriages, the Gleason Gears, and, in Spencerport, the Hoy Potato Digger.
