The Inman Manufacturing Company complex, built at various times between 1877 and 1920, was used to produce much of the early paper box making machinery. This machinery had a significant affect on manufacturing and commerce, worldwide.
Rehabilitation of the Inman Manufacturing Company for use as the Amsterdam Senior Citizens Center was accomplished with funds from a Community Development Block Grant provided by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. Mitigative documentation was prepared in November 1985, by E. Clark Devendorf, Director of Rehabilitation, Amsterdam Urban Renewal Agency.
As a boy, Horace J. Inman had been mechanically inclined, and as a young man, became a mechanic and engineer. The natural gift and later experience became valuable to him as he set about building, for his own use, machinery to improve the quality and reduce the cost of paper boxes.
One of his greatest contributions to the needs of box making is his scorer and cutter. Originally, the scoring and cutting of boards and paper for box making was done with a knife and straight-edge. Another machine that has given the utmost satisfaction for years is the corner cutter.
From this beginning and from these machines, Mr. Inman and the company he founded have built practically every different kind of machine used in the box making trade, down to the present day big combination machine which takes the stock from the rolls, cuts, scores, prints, dyes, folds, pastes and turns out the boxes complete in quantities of fifty to one hundred thousand a day. All with but one operator.
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