The Walker Body Company Factory is a historic factory complex on Oak Street at River Court in
Amesbury, Massachusetts
Amesbury is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, located on the left bank of the Merrimack River near its mouth, upstream from Salisbury and across the river from Newburyport and West Newbury. The population was 17,366 at the ...
. It has been converted to residential use.
The
Walker Body Company
The Walker Body Company, a former carriage manufacturer based in Amesbury, Massachusetts, began manufacturing metal automobile bodies in 1911. It went bankrupt in 1930. The manufacturing site remains as the Walker Body Company Factory.
History
...
, originally the Walker Carriage Manufacturing Company, was a major manufacturing concern in Amesbury during the late 19th and early 20th century. Its factory was located in an area known as "Carriage Hill" due to the large number of
carriage
A carriage is a two- or four-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle for passengers. In Europe they were a common mode of transport for the wealthy during the Roman Empire, and then again from around 1600 until they were replaced by the motor car around 1 ...
builders in the area. Two of its buildings survive: mill #2, a c. 1885 structure built by the Hume Carriage Company, and mill #3, built in 1918 and expanded in 1929. The older building is a three-story brick structure, while the newer one is a wood-frame building designed by the
Beverly, Massachusetts
Beverly is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, and a suburb of Boston. The population was 42,670 at the time of the 2020 United States census. A resort, residential, and manufacturing community on the Massachusetts North Sho ...
firm of Morse & Dickinson. Its wooden construction is unusual in that typical factory construction of the time usually involved brick or other firesafe materials.
The complex was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
in 2007.
See also
*
References
Industrial buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Amesbury, Massachusetts
National Register of Historic Places in Essex County, Massachusetts
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