Former Sonoco Paper Mill

 

Long before Amsterdam, New York, earned its title as the “Carpet City,” its story was written in water. The restless energy of the Chuctanunda Creek, a modest stream tumbling through the Mohawk Valley, was the city’s first engine. By the early 1800s, its currents were powering the fledgling mills, setting the stage for a transformation that would define not just a city, but an entire era of American industry.

The real revolution, however, arrived on a man-made river. The opening of the Erie Canal in the mid-19th century, followed by the iron arteries of the railroad, was like a jolt of lightning. Suddenly, this small upstate city was plugged directly into the world. The goods crafted in its workshops, from linseed oil and simple brooms to intricate buttons and ironworks, could be shipped anywhere with astonishing speed and economy. Amsterdam was no longer just a town; it was becoming a hub.

Yet, among its many trades, one industry rose to define its identity. The city’s name became synonymous with carpets. It was here that two titans of the industry, Sanford-Bigelow and Mohawk, were born. Their factories were not just buildings; they were sprawling brick-and-mortar kingdoms where the clatter of looms was the city’s heartbeat. To walk through Amsterdam in its heyday was to witness a symphony of manufacturing, a place buzzing with purpose and ambition.

This industrial boom created an irresistible pull. A factory whistle wasn’t just a sound; it was a promise. It was the promise of a steady wage, a new life, a foothold in America. Drawn by that promise, waves of immigrants arrived. The Irish, the Italians, the Poles, and families from across Eastern Europe poured into the city, their hopes and dreams as vibrant as the dyes used in the mills. You could hear it in the streets, a rich tapestry of accents and languages weaving into the city’s social fabric as intricately as the carpets themselves. To house these new workers and their families, Amsterdam expanded, its neighborhoods rising up the hills to the north, west, and east, filled with new homes, schools, and storefronts that pulsed with life.

But the world does not stand still. The very forces of innovation and global commerce that had built Amsterdam would, in time, begin to dismantle it. The post-war era introduced a new economic calculus. In 1955, a profound quiet fell over one of the first carpet mills. It was a tremor, the first sign of a seismic shift. The siren call of cheaper labor and easier access to raw materials in the American South was proving too strong to ignore.

What began as a trickle in the late 1950s became a torrent through the 1960s. The migration south wasn't just a business decision; it was the slow, painful unraveling of a city's soul. As the major employers packed up and left, the ecosystem they supported began to wither. The small businesses, the bakeries, the barbershops, the taverns that relied on the mill workers’ paychecks, found themselves in a city with a shrinking population and dwindling hope.

Amsterdam’s economic heart, once a powerful engine of global industry, began to seize. The grand machinery of the carpet giants fell silent, and in that quiet, the smaller gears of the city’s economy slowly ground to a halt. The city that carpets built was left to confront a new reality, its grand brick factories standing as monuments to a prosperous past, their empty windows like eyes gazing out on a changed world.

Some ruins promise treasures of iron and steel, the frozen skeletons of industry waiting to be rediscovered. This old paper mill, from the outside, felt like just such a place. I arrived expecting a museum of mechanical ghosts, but the building had other stories to tell.

The first thing that strikes you is the sheer scale of it, a behemoth of brick and mortar. Its smokestack doesn’t just tower; it pierces the sky, a silent monument to an era when these industrial giants were the lifeblood of the region. Like all great manufacturing industries of its time, it was born beside water. Here, the Chuctanunda Creek served as its artery, a source of both power and a prodigious thirst. The usual telltale signs of water-powered industry, the tailraces and turbine housings, were gone, erased by time or demolition.

Stepping inside, however, the cavernous space was an exercise in emptiness. The great machines were gone, stripped away, leaving behind a void that amplified the sound of my own footsteps. Save for a few strange, squat brick tanks at one end, the main floor was a cathedral of nothing. The treasures I had hoped to find simply were not there.

But silence is rarely absolute. Here, it has been filled by new voices. Graffiti explodes across the walls, a chaotic and vibrant bloom in the decay. Amid the rushed tags and crude scrawls, a few pieces stand out, their brilliant colors a stark rebellion against the gloom. I took a moment to capture them, modern art hung in a gallery of industrial collapse.

It was the walls themselves, though, that held the most compelling secret. In one corner, the brickwork was a jumble, a chaotic puzzle of rough, ill-fitting stones. You could almost feel the hands that laid them in the early 1800s. Then, just a few feet away, the pattern shifts. The bricks become uniform, laid with the clean, symmetrical precision of a later expansion. The building’s entire history was written right there in the masonry, a clear line drawn between its humble beginnings and its later, more powerful form.

From old to new expansions laid bare in the brickwork from left to right.

From that older, more porous section of wall, water wept from an unseen source, a steady, quiet bleed. The sun was sinking, its golden light turning long and weak through the grimy windows and open holes. I was on a clock, with another location still to visit, a fifteen-minute drive away. The fading light added a soft urgency to my movements.

Outside, one last curiosity caught my eye: several large, circular pits in the ground, now filled with stagnant, murky water. Their original purpose is a mystery, but they felt like wounds in the earth. It was a fitting, if unsettling, final image.

The building’s legacy, I later learned, is more than just brick and memory. After its final operator, Sonoco, shut down the site in 1998, the EPA flagged the site for a toxic cocktail of contaminants, including acetone, benzene, toluene, and xylene. The real ghosts of this mill aren’t made of iron or steel. They are invisible, lingering in the soil and the water, a final, toxic inheritance from an unregulated past.

While many today know it simply as the old Sonoco plant, the soul of the place is tied to a name woven deep into Amsterdam’s history: Smeallie. It’s a story that begins not with a blueprint, but with a boy. In the 1860s, a young orphan from West Galway named P. Henry Smeallie arrived in Amsterdam to live with his uncle, a local physician. He was a bright, determined young man who, after graduating from the Amsterdam Academy, found a job that would change his life: bookkeeper at a small paper mill on Forest Avenue.

The mill, then called Stewart & Carmichael, produced simple straw wrapping paper for butcher shops and grocers. But for P. Henry, it was a world of opportunity. He didn't just count the numbers; he learned the business from the inside out. By 1892, his diligence paid off, and he became a partner. Just two years later, he took complete control of the company. In 1907, he joined forces with a fellow Amsterdam native, John L. Voorhees, and the firm of Smeallie and Voorhees was born.

Their story, however, was nearly cut short. In 1913, the Forest Avenue plant burned to the ground. For many, it would have been the end. For Smeallie and Voorhees, it was a rebirth. From the ashes of that disaster rose a stroke of genius. Instead of rebuilding to rely on wood pulp, the standard of the day, they re-engineered their entire operation to run on something most people threw away: waste paper. In an era long before recycling became a household word, they were industrial pioneers of the concept, transforming the city’s cast-off scraps into the very stuff of commerce.

Their innovation proved invaluable. During the war years, the mill produced forty tons of paperboard and wrapping paper daily. This wasn't just packaging; it was a vital part of the war effort, used to wrap everything from anti-aircraft shells and bomb components to food containers for the lend-lease program.

As the father built his legacy, his son was preparing to carry it forward. James Donald (J.D.) Smeallie, born in 1892, joined the family company in 1913 after attending Cornell University. But his career was soon interrupted by the call to serve. He became a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army during World War I, fighting in the brutal trenches of France’s Argonne Forest. He returned home a decorated hero, injured in combat and awarded a Purple Heart for his sacrifice.

The family’s commitment to service extended far beyond the city limits. While J.D. was being groomed to take over the family business, his older brother, J. Morris Smeallie, pursued a life on the sea, eventually rising to the rank of Admiral. On the eve of World War II, he was tasked with the monumental responsibility of defending the Philippines from naval attack, a world away from the paperboard rolling out of his family’s mill.

Back home, J.D. Smeallie took the helm of the company and, for the next three decades, became a pillar of the Amsterdam community. He married Agnes Kennedy, the daughter of a prominent knitting mill partner, and they raised their two children in their home at 19 Grant Avenue. But J.D. was more than just a factory president; he was a city father in the truest sense. He was the Vice President of Farmers Bank, the president of the Board of Education, a trustee for the Sanford Home for Elderly Women, and a board member at St. Mary’s Hospital. His name was synonymous not just with industry, but with civic duty.

In 1964, after a lifetime at the heart of Amsterdam, J.D. Smeallie sold the plant to Sonoco Products. He stayed on for two years as a consultant, a living link between the mill’s past and its future, before finally retiring. He passed away in November of 1972, just six days shy of his 80th birthday, closing the final chapter on a remarkable family legacy that was built, quite literally, from the scraps.

Former Sonoco Products Company offices across the street.

The old Smeallie and Voorhees paper mill has flirted with resurrection before. In the early 2000s, a flicker of hope emerged when a new owner, Marvin Ferris, considered converting the idled plant to produce tissue. His plan was intriguing, an echo of the mill’s origins, using scrap paper as its primary ingredient. But like so many dreams for these industrial husks, the project sputtered out, and the mill fell silent once more.

Now, a new, far more ambitious vision is taking shape. The very site that once churned out 18,000 tons of paperboard annually may be reborn as a bakery and a brewery. In a move signaling the city’s eagerness for a solution, a one-dollar purchase option for the property was granted to AMS Development Partners, a firm co-owned by restaurateur Dennis Turcinovic of Delmonico’s Restaurant Group fame.

The proposal’s real magic, however, lies in its partnership with a Croatian food-tech company, Boogie Lab USA. The estimated $20 million project would transform the 5.5-acre site into the craft bakery’s first North American production facility. Their process is a fascinating alchemy: a unique technique for making artisanal sourdough using the spent grains from beer production, an ingredient typically discarded as waste. A brewpub on-site would create a perfect symbiotic loop, supplying the vital raw material for the bread. It’s a modern echo of the very ingenuity P. Henry Smeallie employed a century ago, turning the city’s scrap paper into industrial gold.

But a heavy shadow hangs over this promising vision. Amsterdam residents, with long memories, are asking a legitimate and pressing question: Is it safe to produce food on a federal Superfund site? The mill’s final chapter with Sonoco ended not just with closed gates in 1998, but with a legacy of significant pollution. The site’s history of contamination is well-documented, a toxic legacy that can’t be easily erased. The entire project hinges on the final environmental assessments, a critical hurdle that will determine if this dream can become a reality.

For now, the future of the Forest Avenue paper mill remains an open question. The mill’s first life ended because it was a product of its time, too old and inefficient to compete. This new plan represents a radical reimagining, a shift from industrial utility to artisanal craft. The target date for renovation remains unwritten, a story waiting for its final, decisive chapter. The question now is whether this old giant, a landmark of Amsterdam’s industrial might and subsequent decay, can truly be cleansed, its legacy rewritten not with paper and ink, but with flour and yeast.

Photo courtesy of Boogie Labs Inc.

A pile of Sonoco Products Molded Wood Plugs.

Source(s):

1. Onyon, A. (2024, April 4). Amsterdam Mayor: Businesses issue letter of intent for former Forest Avenue paper mill. The Daily Gazette. https://www.dailygazette.com/the_recorder/amsterdam-paper-mill/article_444e10f0-f130-11ee-9982-175a7227922f.html

2. WNYT. (2024, May 22). Food tech company eyes old Sonoco site in Amsterdam. WNYT.com. https://wnyt.com/capital-region-news/food-tech-company-eyes-old-sonoco-site-in-amsterdam/

3. Onyon, A. (2024, May 24). Boogie Lab Amsterdam brings '70s-style funk to the Netherlands. The Recorder - Daily Gazette. https://www.dailygazette.com/the_recorder/boogie-lab-amsterdam/article_fd3b6ad4-12de-11ef-889e-1b0febac071c.html

4. Onyon, A. (2025, January 3). Restore NY grant sought for brewpub, bakery in Amsterdam. The Recorder - Daily Gazette. https://www.dailygazette.com/the_recorder/news/restore-bakery-brewpub-amsterdam/article_8d37223e-c957-11ef-a04b-eb16eb7ba7d2.html

5. Cinquanti, M. (2024, August 25). The Smeallie Paper Mill. Growing up in Amsterdam New York. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/groups/411874579617254/posts/1755021235302575/

6. National Paperboard Association. (1933). Proposed code of fair competition for the paper manufacturing industry as submitted on July 24, 1933 (Registry No. 406-02). U.S. Government Printing Office. pp. 3.

7. Lockwood Trade Journal Company. (1918, May 9). Paper Trade Journal, 66(19).

8. Perth Central School. (1962). The Highlander [Unpublished yearbook, digitized PDF]. Perth Central School.

9. Smith, J. (2016, November 15). Amsterdam Birthday Blog. https://amsterdambirthdayblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/

10. Cudmore, B. (n.d.). Amsterdam history. Bob Cudmore. Retrieved June 23, 2024, from https://bobcudmore.com/amsterdam-history.aspx#industries