Railroad-side: 7 Madison Street, Troy

(Read this post as a pdf with footnote citations here.)

This is the first in a series of posts examining buildings and structures adjacent to current and former railroads in Troy, NY.

Photo by Tabitha O'Connell, May 30, 2025.

At 7 Madison Street in Troy, adjacent to the still-in-use tracks of the New York Central Railroad (now operated by CSX), is this former warehouse/mill/grain elevator. The building’s history starts with Oliver Boutwell, a baker who established a flour mill at 651 River Street in Troy in the late 1830s [1]. His son Charles joined the business in 1866, and it became O. Boutwell & Son; after Oliver’s death in 1888, Charles took over the company, renaming it the Boutwell Milling & Grain Co. in 1892 (Anderson 316, 156). It specialized in rye flour, which it sold under the brand name “Upper Hudson Rye Flour” (“Van Alstyne”). By 1895, it was purportedly the largest flour mill in the region (Citizens Association of Troy 31). After Charles retired in 1896, management was taken over by Hugh Galbraith (“Obituary”, “Former Resident Dies”).

[1] Oliver's prior history is detailed by Lyman H. Low: "Oliver began business as a baker at 314 River Street, Troy, in 1831; in 1833 he moved to 7 Grand Division Street, and in 1836 he admitted his brother to partnership; the following year Oliver withdrew and in 1839 established himself as a miller near the 'Sloop Lock,' continuing alone until after the Civil War." For more on the Boutwell mill's River Street location and operations, see Weise, 152-53 and Citizens Association of Troy, 31.

Civil-war era token produced by Oliver Boutwell (ebay). Hoarding of coins during the Civil War left change in short supply, driving businesses to produce their own currency in the form of tokens. See Cane, "The Curious History of Civil War Tokens."

1916 ad for the Boutwell Company (The Weekly Northwestern Miller, 56).

The mill’s original location was on the Hudson River, where it was powered by the nearby state dam. Around 1910, planning began to demolish the dam and rebuild it farther north, causing concern about a loss of power for the industries that depended on it (“This Day in 1910”) [2]. One contemporary source cites this as the Boutwell Company’s reason for relocating (“Mayor on Police”); however, it seems that the actual reason was the state’s desire to locate a terminal for the New York State barge canal at that location [3], as they purchased the Boutwell property for that purpose in 1914 (“Property Paid For”).

[2] The dam was rebuilt at its new location from 1913-15 as a federal dam, and remains in place today (“Troy Lock and Dam on the Hudson”).

[3] Terminal = site for loading/unloading. Troy had two, the upper and lower; this was the upper.

1886 illustration of the Boutwell mill at its original location on River Street (Weise, 153).

1895 illustration of the Boutwell mill on River Street, with the state dam in the background. A larger building has replaced one of those in the earlier image (Citizens Association of Troy, 31).

1904 map showing the plan of the Boutwell mill's original plant (Sanborn Map Company 1904).

Thus requiring a new site, the Boutwell Company considered relocating outside of Troy, but ultimately secured a spot in South Troy: 7 Madison Street. Their new plant would be larger than the old, and would have the advantage of being adjacent to the tracks of the New York Central railroad (“The New Boutwell Site”, “Mayor on Police”). 

Aerial map of the City of Troy, with Boutwell's original location marked by the red circle and the new location by the yellow circle. Troy's downtown is roughly centered between the two. (Map by Tabitha O'Connell, made with QGIS and Inkscape.)

Details of the plans were described in the Troy Times:

The building will represent the last word in mill design and construction, and is the work of The A. E. Baxter Engineering Company of Buffalo, the engineers who designed the last mill of The Washburn-Crosby Company, which is the largest one in the world, and drew plans for many of the large elevators in Buffalo and other lake cities. The main part of the building will be five stories high and will be adjoined by a one-story storage building [...]. The elevator will accommodate 80,000 bushels, and the milling capacity will be 800 barrels of grain and twenty tons of rye feed per day (“Boutwell’s New Plant”).

1916 ad for Baxter Engineering. Note the similarity of this Chicago building to the Boutwell building (The Weekly Northwestern Miller, 7).

The new building, made of brick and reinforced concrete, was constructed by the Deverall-Spencer Company of Baltimore and was completed by the end of 1915 or early 1916 (“A Peculiar Building”, “The Southern Wards”, The Troy Directory). 

1924 photograph of the building (“New Concrete Mill in East”).

1951 Sanborn map showing the plan of the building and adjacent railroad tracks. OFF. = office, W. HO. = warehouse, ST'GE = storage. The tower contains the stairway, and the five-story section contains the feed mill. See my Resources page for sources describing the meaning of the symbology (Sanborn Map Company 1951).

Interior photos (2021 rental flyer via myelisting.com. Visit flyer link for full-size photos).

The Boutwell Company occupied the building for about 10 years, setting a trend which its successors followed. In 1927, the business was sold to the newly formed Upper Hudson Rye Flour Mills, who continued to manufacture Boutwell’s trademark flour ("New Company", "Flour & Feed"). In 1937, it was sold to the Geneva-based Finger Lakes & Hudson Flour Mills (Grantee Index, Grantor Index, "Ad"); then in 1949, it was purchased by Interstate Commodities, Inc., who would own it until 2021 (their sign is still on the building) ("Deed from..."). Interstate Commodities was also a feed and grain business, meaning the building served its original purpose for over 100 years. It will likely see adaptive reuse in the near future.

Photo by Tabitha O'Connell, May 30, 2025.

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The 7 Madison Files

For every post on this site, I intend to make my original research available for the use of future researchers or anyone else interested in viewing the primary sources. My collection of historical documents pertaining to this property—both those referenced in this post and additional ones giving more information—is at the link above, with an index document in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. (Note: Some functionality appears to only be available to signed-in users. I'll be looking into an alternative file-sharing service for the future, but for now, here's a direct link to the spreadsheet, because it's apparently hidden from non-signed-in users.)

7 Madison Photo Album

Additional photos of this building taken by me, hosted on Flickr.

Bibliography

• "A Peculiar Building." The Troy Times, July 21, 1915. Fulton History.
• "Ad." The Northwestern Miller 224, no. 11 (1945). Archive.org.
• Anderson, George Baker. Landmarks of Rensselaer County, New York. D. Mason & Company, 1897. Archive.org.
• "Boutwell's New Plant." The Troy Times, July 20, 1915. Fulton History.
• Cane, Max. "The Curious History of Civil War Tokens." Field Guide to History. May 27, 2020. https://www.fieldguidetohistory.com/blog/the-curious-history-of-civil-war-tokens.
• Citizens Association of Troy. The Industrial Advantages of Troy, N. Y. James P. McKinney, 1895. Google Books.
• "Deed from Interstate Commodities, Inc. to Madison First Street, LLC," April 8, 2021. Book 9569, page 27. Rensselaer County Clerk.
• "Flour & Feed Manufacturers." The Troy Times, February 11, 1928. Fulton History.
• "Former Resident Dies at Home in Washington, D. C." The Times Record, February 28, 1945. Fulton History.
• "Leading Eastern Mills." The Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 4, 1916. HathiTrust.
• Low, Lyman H. "Hard Times Tokens." American Journal of Numismatics 33, no. 4 (April 1899): 118-122. JSTOR.
• "May Go to Schenectady." The Troy Times, February 20, 1915. Fulton History.
• "Mayor on Police Legislation." The Troy Times, May 7, 1915. Fulton History.
• "Members of the New York Produce Exchange." Report of the New York Produce Exchange. 1915. Google Books.
• "The New Boutwell Site." The Troy Times, May 18, 1915. Fulton History.
• "New Company Chartered." The Troy Times, September 19, 1927. Fulton History.
• "New Concrete Mill in East Produces Rye Flour." The American Miller 52, no. 11 (1924). Google Books.
• "Obituary." The Troy Times, January 6, 1911. Fulton History.
• "Ownership of New York Exchange Seat Settled." American Miller 57, no. 1 (1929). Google Books.
• "Property Paid For." The Semi-Weekly Times (Troy, NY), December 22, 1914. Fulton History.
• "Sheet 105." Insurance Maps of Troy, Volume Two, 1904 - Feb. 1951. Sanborn Map Company, 1951. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.
• "Sheet 17." Insurance Maps of Troy, Volume One, 1903. Sanborn Map Company, 1904. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.
• "The Southern Wards." The Troy Times, November 24, 1915. Fulton History.
• "This Day in 1910 in The Record: Sept. 10, 1910." The Record (Troy, NY), July 21, 2021. https://www.troyrecord.com/2010/09/10/this-day-in-1910-in-the-record-sept-10-1910/.
• The Troy Directory. Sampson & Murdock Company, 1916. Ancestry.com.
• "Troy Lock and Dam on the Hudson." US Army Corps of Engineers, October 2024. https://www.usace.army.mil/About/History/Historical-Vignettes/Civil-Engineering/166-Troy-Lock-and-Dam/.
• "Van Alstyne & Company v. The Boutwell Milling & Grain Company." The Trade-Mark Reporter, Volume 5. 1915. Google Books.
• Weise, Arthur James. The City of Troy and its Vicinity. Edward Green, 1886. Google Books.