Take a walk with Bill Hagenbuch and photographer Timothy Hearsum through the Hooven & Allison ropemaking factory. On one day in 1973, we can see various kinds of rope production - manila, sisal, jute, oakum, and polypropylene.

​Through his photography, Timothy Hearsum preserved the look and feel of the H&A ropemaking factory. We see workers operating modern plastics machinery to create fibers that were spun on the same turn-of-the-century ropemaking machinery as the natural fibers. 

These color photographs by Timothy Hearsum, from Bill Hagenbuch’s collection, are now archived at the Greene County Library in Xenia, Ohio.

​Photos courtesy of Timothy Hearsum and Bill Hagenbuch.

Timothy Hearsum's black and white prints from Hooven & Allison ropemaking factory provide a detailed and artistic view of the workers, the fibers, and the ropemanufacturing process in 1973.

These black & white prints by Timothy Hearsum are archived at the Greene County Library in Xenia, Ohio.
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Photos courtesy of  Timothy Hearsum and Greene County Library.

​This collection includes Bill Hagenbuch’s color slides of the H&A through the years, as well abaca (manila) growing in Honduras in 1946, and sisal plantations in Tanzania in 1965.
 
Photos courtesy of Bill Hagenbuch

Photographs of the Hooven & Allison factory in 2011, six years after the fire that destroyed the complex.