The Flywheel: A Monument to Piermont's Industrial Past

The Flywheel: A Monument to Piermont's Industrial Past. . flywheel: (noun) A heavy-rimmed rotating wheel that uses its momentum to minimize speed variation in a machine., Workers installed this flywheel in 1902 as part of the Piermont Paper Company's steam driven electrical system. Piermont became a cardboard manufacturing center because the Sparkill Creek supplied fresh water to process the paper, and an existing railroad could carry supplies in and out of the plant. For 80 years, this flywheel helped power a succession of mills that recycled wastepaper into paperboard., The steam that powered the flywheel also heated the 93 rollers that dried the pulp for two behemoth paper making machines. Each longer than a football field and weighing hundreds of tons, they were among the largest in the world. Some say on stormy nights you can still hear the thunderous din of the 25-cycle generator., The Robert Gair Company bought the mill in 1920. Gair was a leader in the paper industry and had introduced the first affordable cardboard box. The mill employed 1,300 people with more than 85 percent of its $1.25 million annual payroll going to local employees. Village grocers, butchers, doctors, banks and other businesses prospered., The wheel kept spinning through two world wars and the Great Depression. Toward the end of World War II, the plant's peak production years, up to 480 tons of paperboard a day were churned., Gair merged with Continental Can in 1956. The Federal Paper Board Company leased the mill from 1971 until 1973, when Clevepack bought it. The mill closed permanently in 1982., After a search for a replacement industry, the village revitalized this valuable riverfront property with a mixed commercial-residential development. When demolition began for Piermont Landing, workers struggled to remove the flywheel, but the wrecking ball just bounced off. Leave it, they were told. Let it stand as a monument to Piermont's industrial past and to the hard working men and women who were a part of it.