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Date: 10/31/2018
CHICOPEE – David Graci’s latest book was born out of an observation.
He told an audience at the Chicopee Public Library recently that he had once lived at Ames Privilege, the apartment complex at the site of the former Ames Manufacturing Company and had noticed a door in the smokestack that still stood.
He wondered about it and that led to research about the role the factory played not only in American armament but also in art.
Graci’s latest book is “The Ames Foundry and Their Statues.” He has previously written a book about Mount Holyoke and the mountain houses there as well as one on American stoneware bottles.
Ames Manufacturing moved to Chicopee in 1829 to take advantage of the waterpower here. Today Ames is primarily remembered for making cannon and swords. Graci said cannon were tested in what is now the parking lot of the apartment building, with cannon balls fired into the nearby embankment of Granby Road.
Swords were also a specialty, Graci said and explained the company was known for making swords valued at $1,500 in mid-19th century dollars, a fortune today. He noted that when these swords come to auction now, they frequently sold at values between $700,000 and $1 million.
The library has two swords on display, as well as other photos and artifacts depicting the company’s history and output.
It is the art that is the topic of Graci’s book, though, and much of that art remains to this day.
Prior to artists using Ames to cast their bronze sculptures, Graci said the statues were fabricated at foundries either in France or Germany and then shipped here.
That changed in the 1840s when Ames started casting statues here, Graci said. The result was almost 100 statues erected throughout the nation.
In Chicopee, Ames’ work is still visible. The company made the eagle weathervane on the City Hall tower, as was the bronze plaques on City Hall listing the Civil War soldiers from Chicopee who were killed in the conflict.
A statue on the grounds of the Dupont Middle School was also made by Ames.
In Springfield, the iron fence that surrounds the armory was made by Ames from obsolete iron cannon, Graci said.
The Civil War provided a burst of activity for the company. Ames Manufacturing made almost 100 statues and Graci explained that most of them were memorials to soldiers killed during the Civil War.
Communities did not receive their dead back for burial and the statues were commissioned either for erection in the town or in the battlefield so people could have a place to remember and mourn.
“It was a replacement for a cemetery monument,” Graci said.
Other famous commissions included the bronze doors for the East Wing of the United States Capitol, two statues of George Washington on horseback ¬ one of which is in Boston Public Garden – and sculptor Daniel Chester French famed Minuteman statue in Concord.
The company’s high standards and workmanship attracted world-class sculptors, Graci noted.
Ames was sold to A. G. Spaulding Company in 1907 and the factory was converted to produce sporting equipment.
To order Graci’s book, go to https://stonebotle.wixsite.com/davegraci/more-info?fbclid=IwAR2bQ8npEs6a2-n2Wx5rq-BrTwXwKQPs527tf7qGzce3swpwZ000Oc7Ztf8.