Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near North Cold Spring Cold Spring, NY

Cold Spring is a village in the town of Philipstown in Putnam County, sitting on the east bank of the Hudson River about 50 miles north of New York City, directly across the river from West Point.

The first settler of Cold Spring was Thomas Davenport, who arrived in 1730, and local tradition says the village got its name after George Washington drank from a local spring and found the water cold.

In 1818 Gouverneur Kemble and partners established the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, and the ironworks grew into one of the most important industrial sites in the United States.

During the Civil War the West Point Foundry produced munitions for the Union Army, including the famed Parrott gun, the rifled cannon designed by foundry superintendent Robert Parker Parrott.

The West Point Foundry also built some of America's earliest steam locomotives, including the DeWitt Clinton in 1831.

Cold Spring was incorporated as a village in 1846, on the strength of the foundry workers who flooded in and filled the village with new housing, shops and churches.

The foundry closed in 1911, and Cold Spring's industrial prominence faded until a post-World War II revival brought commuters and, eventually, tourists.

The village center is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Cold Spring Historic District, recognized in 1973 as a Federal Historic District for its well-preserved 19th-century buildings erected to house foundry workers.

The 87-acre West Point Foundry Preserve, owned by Scenic Hudson, preserves the foundry's ruins — its boring mill, blast furnace and casting house — along wooded trails by Foundry Brook.

Cold Spring had a population of 1,986 at the 2020 census, down slightly from 2,013 in 2010, and state figures put the village at roughly 850 households.