Gear City was the bustling industrial district located along W. Fayette Street in Syracuse's Near Westside. Over a century ago it provided a setting where industrial innovators designed and manufactured the machines and buildings that propelled industrial society, redefined modern life for people across the nation, and gave rise to the residential development of the city's westside.

Syracuse Universtiy architecture students, scholars, and community members are working together to tell the story of Gear City, researching its urban, architectural, social, and ecological history. Of particular importance in these studies are the surviving factories designed by Albert Kahn which used innovations in materials and contruction techniques that were as bold as the products invented and manufactured in them. It is the hope that this research will excite and inform the restoration of a community that is no longer defined by the industrial economy that once flourished.

The end goal of this project will be an exhibition of images, text, and graphic design telling the story of Gear City in an online format and potentially in a public community installation to be completed by the Fall of 2013.