MEMORY AND HOPE: FOUR LOCAL MUSEUMS IN THE MILL TOWNS OF THE INDUSTRIAL NORTHEAST' BRIAN O’DONNELL, S.J. For a generation, American news media have been telling us of the passing ofindustrial regimes in old towns of the Northeast. Such stories end with a plaintive question, “With the old machinerysilent, what is this town’s future?” For a number of mill towns, the future has included recapturing the old industrial regime in the local history museum. The wellknown national park presenting the cotton textile regime of Lowell has benefited from an influx of federal dollars. However, in most cases mill town museums rely very heavily on local support, especially in maintaining operations. Part of the post-mill-shutdown story in these cities has been the people’s rallying to the support of the local museum, and finding in that museum’s exhibits a commemoration, and in part a celebration, of what previous generations had built right in that place. This review examines four such exhibits in towns located in the Hudson Valley and New England, towns once known for one or two major industries. Three of the exhibits are part of state-sponsored efforts to simultaneously celebrate local history and stimulate local development, while one is very much a homegrown project. All do an exceptional job of using artifacts, graphics, photographs, and written commentary to convey the history of local industry and en courage an appreciation of what remains of the built environment of the old regime. A visitor to Waterbury who makes it as far as the city’s long green will have no problem finding signs showing the way to the Mattatuck Museum. The three-story museum building, an erstwhile Masonic Dr. O’Donnell is assistant professor of the history of technology at the University of Detroit Mercy. His doctoral work focused on responses to industrial decline in the Merrimack Valley. ‘Exhibit and museums mentioned in this review: “Brass Valley: A Community History,” at the Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut; the museum of the Lawrence Heritage State Park, Lawrence, Massachusetts; the museum of the Lynn Heritage State Park, Lynn, Massachusetts; and the Interpretive Centers of the Troy/ Cohoes portion of the Hudson-Mohawk Urban Cultural Park in New York State.© 1996 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/96/3704-0006$01.00 817 818 Brian O’Donnell, S.J. Hall enlarged and remodeled by architect Cesar Pelli, serves as a cultural center for the city, housing an art collection and a perfor mance center. Six thousand square feet of the first floor are dedi cated to a presentation of “Brass Valley: A Community History.” From the 1820s to the 1970s America’s brass industry centered along the Naugatuck Valley, and Waterbury was at the heart of this “Brass Valley.” During the 20th century, the Mattatuck Historical Society—its name taken from the colonial designation of the Water bury region—collected artifacts from this industry and exhibited them in an old mansion facing the city green. In 1972, the society enhanced its outreach and education efforts, and a newly recruited corps ofvolunteers linked the museum with the community through a series of creative programs. In 1980, the museum mounted an ex hibit titled “Metal, Minds, and Machines: Waterbury at Work,” which focused largely on the history of the city’s then-much-declined brass industry.2 The community’s pride in the society’s work was manifest in its response to a 1983 capital campaign for a new museum: 530 local residents pledged $4 million. (Only 12 of the pledges failed to come through.) Those developing the Brass Valley exhibition benefited mightily from the advice ofJeremy Brecher and the oral histories he and his associates had compiled in their 1979-84 Brass Valley Workers History Project.3 With the help of grants from the State of Connecticut and from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the new Mattatuck Museum opened in 1986. The Brass Valley exhibit presents the Waterbury region’s history sequentially as the visitor follows a maze-like passageway that maxi mizes wall display area. The exhibit begins with the original Algonquian tribes and ends with a 1970s Waterbury filled...