Jamestown

North America, United States of America, New York,

Description

Jamestown is a city in southern Chautauqua County, New York, United States. The population was 31,146 at the 2010 census and was estimated at 29,058 in 2019. Situated between Lake Erie to the north and the Allegheny National Forest to the south, Jamestown is the largest population center in the county. Nearby Chautauqua Lake is a freshwater resource used by fishermen, boaters, and naturalists.
Notable people from Jamestown include legendary comedienne Lucille Ball, U.S. Supreme Court justice and Nuremberg chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson, naturalist Roger Tory Peterson, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
In the 20th Century, Jamestown was a thriving industrial area, noted for producing several well-known products. They include the crescent wrench, produced by Karl Peterson's the Crescent Tool Company in Jamestown beginning in 1907. and the automatic lever voting machine, manufactured by the Automatic Voting Machine Company, which dominated the lever voting machine industry from its location on Jones and Gifford Avenue in Jamestown until its bankruptcy in 1983. Jamestown was also once called the "Furniture Capital of the World" because of the once-thriving furniture industry. People visited from all over the country to attend furniture expositions at the Furniture Mart, a building that still stands in the city and houses offices for a variety of companies. For most of the 20th Century, Blackstone Corporation, led by Reginald Lenna, was Jamestown's largest employer and one of the driving cores of the local economy, manufacturing washing machines and automobile components.