The City of Cohoes, located at the junction of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers, was developed on land bought from the Indians in 1630 by Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, a director of the Dutch West India Company. Up to the time of the revolution, Cohoes was strictly an agricultural area.

With the availability of abundant water power, manufacturing and commercial operations began locating in Cohoes. The first major manufacturing was the Cohoes Company, which developed cheap water power and offered inducements to industrialists to locate in Cohoes. With the beginning of industrial development, the population rose from 150 in 1840 to 4,229 in 1850. An economic depression from 1840 to 1842 restarted, but did not halt, the expansion in Cohoes.

The Civil War marked the beginning of rapid growth in Cohoes. The population of Cohoes in 1865 was 8,795, by 1870, it was 15,357. The amount of investment in capital facilities by 1870 was more than $20 million, an increase of over $17 million in five years. From 1867 to 1872, employment rose from 2,729 to 7,752.

By 1870, the City of Cohoes was an established manufacturing center, especially of textiles. Among many other industries in Cohoes there were six large cotton mills running 203,000 spindles, eighteen knitting mills, two foundries, and three machine shops. During the rest of the 19th century, the population of Cohoes increased.