Water Power Lofts

Water Power Lofts

Water Power Lofts occupies the former Rockford Brass Works, founded in 1890, which spent more than seventy years pouring brass castings and custom valves on South Main Street. The five-story plant went up in 1925, with an addition in 1958, in the Water Power District — the stretch of the Rock River where Rockford's industry first took hold, and the district that gives the building its name today.

The foundry outlasted most of its neighbors, then went quiet, and the building sat empty for years.

It reopened in 2024 as Water Power Lofts — sixty-four apartments where the concrete floors, the exposed structure, and the red brick pavers off the old foundry floor are all still here. The factory didn't get erased; it got a second century.

Rockford Brass Works was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 6, 2022.