Category: Industrial

Lyman Cotton Mill (1865)

by Dan//Holyoke, Industrial, Italianate

The Lyman Cotton Mills in Holyoke erected a complex of buildings in the city in the second half of the nineteenth century. The company started with two original mills, built c. 1850, located between the First and Second Level Canals, that it inherited from the earlier Hadley Falls Company. Mill No. 3 was erected in 1872-1873. The company office and other additional buildings were erected on Front Street, along the First Level Canal. The one pictured above contained the Cloth Room Building (on the right) and the No. 2 Store House (on the left). Located at 72-100 Front Street, it was built c. 1865-1870. It is now called Canal Place and is used for offices.

Crocker Mill (1870)

by Dan//Holyoke, Industrial, Italianate

Crocker Mill, Holyoke

I took the picture above in 2012 of a factory building in Holyoke which was demolished in 2013-2014. What became known as the Crocker Mill in Holyoke was built by the Hampden Paper Company in 1870 at 14 Water Street, between the Third Level Canal and the Connecticut River, to replace an earlier wooden mill building erected in 1864. The Crocker Manufacturing Company, which produced high quality colored and ornamental papers, was organized in 1871 and acquired the building. The company was sold to the American Writing Paper Company in 1899. The mill was acquired by Brown Paper Company in 1963.

Museum of Russian Icons (1853, 1859, 2006)

by Dan//Clinton, Commercial, Industrial, Italianate, Museums, Organizations, Victorian Eclectic

Museum of Russian Icons

The building at 203 Union Street in Clinton was constructed in 1853 to house the Bigelow Mechanics Institute. This institution was founded in 1846. As described in History of the Origin of the Town of Clinton, Massachusetts, 1653-1865 (1896), by Andrew E. Ford:

April 14, 1846, a petition was made to a justice of peace by H. N. Bigelow, J. R. Stewart, L. F. Bancroft, J. B. Parker, Sanborn Worthen, A. S. Carleton and G. H. Kendall, representing that those gentlemen were “desirous of forming an association for the purpose of mutual improvement and for the further purpose of extending improvement to and throughout the village in which they reside, and the neighborhood with which they are more immediately connected, by sustaining courses of lectures upon the sciences and their connection with the mechanical arts, by sustaining, if their means shall allow it, a school for scientific instruction and education in those branches more immediately connected with their employment, and the collection of a library, a reading room and a repository of ‘models and drawings of useful machines and mechanical inventions.” In answer to this petition, a warrant was issued for a meeting for the purpose of organizing an association with these ends in view.

[. . .] The preamble of the constitution presented and adopted offers a broader basis of organization than was suggested in the petition, namely: “In order to promote our mutual improvement in literature, science and the mechanical arts; —to diffuse a taste for literary, scientific and mechanical pursuits in the community in which we reside;—and to develop the social, moral and intellectual natures with which we arc endowed by one Creator.”

The society took the name “The Bigelow Mechanics’ Institute in Clintonville.” E. B. Bigelow, in whose honor this name had been assumed, in addition to other donations, gave to the society as a recognition of his esteem, the valuable air pump, now used by the Clinton High School, and two hundred dollars to be used for the good of the Institute. A fee of five dollars was charged for membership, and some forty men joined.

At various times, from 1853 to 1873, the Institute also rented out space in the building to the postal service, to the Town of Clinton for its armory and to local businesses. Next door to the Institute, the building at 195 Union Street was built in 1859 to serve as Horatio N. Bigelow‘s private office. The brothers, Horatio N. and Erastus B. Bigelow developed Clinton as an industrial community.

In 1873, the Bigelow Mechanics Institute disbanded and its library was donated to the town to become the Bigelow Free Public Library. The Institute’s old building became a tenement. The adjacent building, H. N. Bigelow’s former office, served as the the Second District Court of Eastern Worcester County from 1886 to 1972, and its basement was the Clinton Police Station until 1969. Both buildings later served as law offices. In recent years the complex has undergone an extensive transformation to house the Museum of Russian Icons, founded in 2006 by art collector and industrialist Gordon B. Lankton. A contemporary, aluminum-clad addition to the museum was constructed in 2008.

Lancaster Mills Company, Building No. 23 (1870)

by Dan//Clinton, Colonial Revival, Industrial, Octagon

Building No. 23, Lancaster Mills Company

One of the buildings of the former Lancaster Mills factory complex in Clinton is a one-story brick octagonal structure that was built before 1870 (c. 1857-1870). Designated Building No. 23, it served as offices. Originally located at the west corner of Mill No. 1, it was moved between 1879 and 1898 to the southwest corner of the complex and connected to a small one-story ell. In 1918, the rear addition was expanded into a larger structure, designed by Lockwood, Green & Co.

Wauregan Paper Company (1879)

by Dan//Greek Revival, Holyoke, Industrial

Wauregan Hall

Located at 418-420 Dwight Street, between the first and second level canals in Holyoke, is an old mill building constructed by James H. Newton in 1879. Newton had purchased the land from his brothers, David H. and John C. Newton, in 1871. The Newton family established many industrial concerns in Holyoke. The Wauregan Paper Company purchased the mill from Newton in 1880 and used it to produce book papers. In 1899, the company was incorporated into the American Writing Paper Company. The building, known as Wauregan Hall, continued to be used over the years for light manufacturing. It was acquired in 2009 by three artists from San Francisco who have plans to transform it into a European-style in-door market for artisanal food producers. Continue reading “Wauregan Paper Company (1879)”

Laundry and Machine Shop, Hancock Shaker Village (1790)

by Dan//Hancock, Industrial, Vernacular

Laundry and Machine Shop

The oldest part of the Laundry and Machine Shop building at Hancock Shaker Village dates to 1790, when the structure may have been used as a dwelling by the Goodrich family, whose owner became a convert. The Shakers positioned this building to take advantage of the penstock, or incoming water supply pipe. The building was moved in 1829 to make room for the brick dwelling. The Laundry and Machine Shop is unusual in that both the Shaker Brothers and Sisters did their work under the same roof, albeit separated into the female laundry and the male machine/woodworking shops. Both groups utilized power provided by an 1858 water turbine. An addition was built on the machine shop in 1839. Continue reading “Laundry and Machine Shop, Hancock Shaker Village (1790)”