More Milling About in Norwood

From Dave Brigham:

As often happens with me, I've had Norwood, Mass., in the back of my head for a long time, since driving through the town of roughly 31,000 residents once many years ago. I wrote recently about a former mill in the town that's been transformed for a variety of uses, from antique stores and a performance venue, to recording and artist studios (see October 29, 2022, "Bombing Around a Former Norwood Mill").

Officially formed in 1833 once it split off from the "mother town" of Dedham, Norwood was for many years a printing industry town. With that in mind, in this post I will look at the remnants of those factories. In a subsequent post, I will review downtown Norwood and other areas, discussing a cool diner and other restaurants/bars; an amazing theater; a fantastic bowling center; a former jail; a riverside walk; a one-time synagogue and much more.

I continue to be amazed by just how many old mill towns there are in eastern Massachusetts, never mind the entire state. As for Norwood, "[b]y the early 1900s [it] was come to be thought of as the 'printing center of the United States,'" according to the Norwood Historical Society. "Not only did they have two large printing companies and a small printing firm, but there was also a tannery that supplied leather for book covers and a company that made printing ink for newspapers and a company that manufactured cloth for book covers."

The old Norwood Press complex is located along Washington Street, south of downtown and hard by the railroad tracks.

Currently home to an Extra Space Storage facility and other businesses, this set of buildings was once home to three companies that each owned a one-third share in Norwood Press, which was a real estate holding company, according to the historical society.

"The Norwood Press first opened its doors in January of 1895," per the historical society. "At that time J. S. Cushing & Co (compositors) and Berwick and Smith (printers) were the only companies that moved into the new facility and began printing books. However, they still needed a bookbinder partner to come join them in Norwood; without one, all the printed pages would have to be shipped out to be bound....In 1897, the Norwood Press completed an addition to their Washington Street facility, and bookbinders, E. Fleming & Co., moved in. Now a book could be manufactured in one place, a novel idea at the time."

(I like that Extra Space has updated the clock on the old factory.)

The three companies had a good run for several decades, but by the mid-1950s it was over. "The Norwood Press had some of their best years before World War II, the height being in the 1920s," per the historical society. "After WWII, the press experienced declining production and operating shortages. In early 1952, management and labor could not agree on a contract, especially relating to procedures for machine operation that would reduce costs. In April the Norwood Press shutdown (sic), in October Berwick & Smith was dissolved, and in 1954 C. B. Fleming and J.S Cushing & Co. were dissolved on the same day."

Across Washington Street is the former site (I think; possibly it was where Frank's Food Mart and gas station are now) of Ambrose Press and the Norwood Messenger, the latter a newspaper published by the former. Ambrose was in business from the late 1890s into the 1970s, per the Norwood Historical Society.

The Norwood assessor's office indicates that the warehouse was built in 1954. The Environmental Protection Agency lists the site as a Superfund site for Ambrose Press.

Half a mile away, on the eastern side of the train tracks, once stood the Plimpton Press. The massive complex was torn down in recent years, to make for the Avalon Norwood apartment development. What's left is a smokestack and a remnant of railroad tracks.

I really wish I'd explored Norwood before this was demolished. To see photos of the mill being razed, check out the Norwood Then and Now blog.

Herbert and Howard Plimpton founded their company in Boston in 1882, according to Norwood Then and Now. In 1897, the Norwood Business Association convinced the Plimpton Press to move to its town. "The location was so successful," according to the blog, "[Herbert] closed the Boston plant in 1904, added an addition to [the] Norwood plant and moved the rest of his business to Norwood." The company reached its pinnacle in the 1950s, when it employed 1,200 workers.

"Like the competing press in town, the Norwood Press, the Plimpton Press began by producing school textbooks," per Norwood Then and Now. "Eventually to offset the seasonal nature of textbook printing, the press expanded into religious books, fiction and deluxe editions of classic novels."

The plant closed in 1973. The complex was used as warehouse spaces for many years after. According to MACRIS, the complex was also known as the Howard Woodworking Company and the Paine Furniture Warehouse.

Directly across Plimpton Avenue from the Avalon development, to the south, is the Print Lofts apartment building.

I'm not sure whether this building was part of Plimpton Press or not, but I'm sure happy it's been rehabbed into apartments rather than torn down to make way for them.

This building might also have been part of Holliston Mills, another printing company that was located on Lenox Street.

Before I get to a former roofing and flooring mill complex in the south of Norwood, I want to mention the Morrill Ink Works along Pleasant Street, remnants of which still stand but which I did not photograph.

Located just south of the Neponset River, the Morrill complex was in business from the late 19th century into the early 1970s. "They started out making just black ink, around 1874 they began to make colored ink," according to the Norwood Historical Society. "By 1890, the company had enlarged its Norwood facilities to fourteen buildings. Then in 1894, the Norwood plant was totally rebuilt and new buildings added in order to meet their sales demands. In 1904 they added a new building to make dry colors that are needed for the manufacturing of colored inks, and the following year another building was constructed to handle the making of colored ink, and they retooled the facility again in 1914. By 1910 it was said they were the largest producer of printing ink in the United States and over twelve million newspapers used George H. Morrill ink daily....For over eighty-five years the Morrill ink works had been a family run business, employing five generations of Morrills. In 1929 they sold the company, and it became part of The General Printing Ink Company, and in 1972, they stopped manufacturing ink in Norwood."

I wanted to make photos of the buildings that remain from the old Morrill complex. Honestly, I couldn't find a decent place to park, so I gave up. There, I said it.

OK, let's get to the Norwood Space Center.

Comprised of more than two dozen buildings, this site "was originally owned by Bird & Sons, who operated a paper mill in Walpole in 1838 and launched a roofing company in Norwood that expanded to a floor covering plant by the early 1900s," according to this April 2016 New England Real Estate Journal article about the site's redevelopment.

Not all of the buildings have been repurposed. The ones that have include "a mix of retail, commercial, creative, and entertainment space," per the Norwood Space Center web site. "The spaces range from small artist studios to large commercial suites and everything in between. Our core workspace is occupied by WORKBAR, a remote work solution providing open and shared co-work space along with private office options."

Tenants include Irish Brewing Boston, which brews beer and roasts coffee on-site....

(Exterior of Irish Brewing Boston.)

...Salvage Angel, which sells clothing and home goods....

(Exterior of Salvage Angel.)

...Magic Room, an intimate music and entertainment venue.

(Exterior of Magic Room, which formerly operated out of Boston's Brighton neighborhood.)

I wish I lived a little closer to this place, since it has places I would love to frequent. What really grabbed me about the Space Center, however, were the gritty details around the edges.

(The stone below the middle window has this inscription: "1795-1923." That gives you an idea of how long this site has been in use for industry of one sort or another.)

The warehouse-sized building behind Magic Room has a few broken windows at street level. I poked my head through one and learned what these old mills look like before they get redeveloped.

Regular readers know I don't trespass and go on urbex adventures, so for me this was quite a stunning sight.

Make sure to check back for the third and final post about Norwood, covering the downtown area and other features.

Zooming Through Loom City, Part I: The Mills

From That Same Old Guy:

I've traipsed through plenty of old mill towns in service of this blog -- Watertown to Clinton to Maynard to Hudson (all in Massachusetts) -- but I'd never seen anyplace like Rockville, Connecticut. A Tolland County village that was incorporated in 1889 and subsumed by the town of Vernon in 1965, Rockville is bisected by the Hockanum River, which drops more than 250 feet over 1.5 miles. That water power allowed for the development of several mills, going back before the Revolutionary War, per Wikipedia.

Before embarking on a recent day trip to visit my mother in Connecticut, I did a quick Google Maps search to find a good place not too far off the highway where I could explore. Rockville immediately jumped out at me, because of the R.E.M. song. As I zoomed in closer on the map, I could see that there was a nice little downtown; what caught my eye first was Loom City Lofts. That sounded promising. Once I saw Paper Mill Pond and Springville Mill Apartments, I headed to Wikipedia to learn more about this mill town, and realized I had found the right place.

I started my tour at the loft apartment building, which is stunning in its color and style.

Loom City Lofts is situated at the southern end of Shenipsit Lake, where the headwaters of the Hockanum River are located.

This building is unlike any other old mill complex I've seen. Known historically as the Minterburn Mill, this structure was built in 1906, and is an early example of reinforced concrete in an industrial buildling. Every other mill in Rockville and the other towns and cities that I've visited is wood or brick or a combination.

There used to be more buildings at the site, the oldest of which dated to 1834. A three-building complex known as the Rockville Warp Building was demolished in 2016. "The site's industrial history dates to at least the 18th century, when an iron works and a gin distillery were documented at the site," according to Wikipedia. "In the late 18th century George Hall established a fulling mill....The Rockville Warp Building dates to this time; the proprietors also built a stone dam, which was later replaced by the present concrete dam. The mill produced cotton warps used for yarn and satinet production in a number of Rockville's mills. In 1906, the plant was purchased by the Minterburn Mills....That company produced woolen and worsted fabrics until it closed in 1952. The plant was then bought by Roosevelt Mills, which produced knitwear at least into the 1970s."

The apartments opened in 2016.

My next stop was a backsider's dream, the heart of the Rockville Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. "The Rockville Historic District consists of approximately 550 acres and includes 975 buildings, a structural density of 1.8 buildings per acre." according to this Living Places web page. "The...[d]istrict is a physical reflection of the development during the nineteenth century of a small industrial city. Dominated by its textile mill buildings and with the fall of the Hockanum River as its matrix, the City of Rockville...embodied the urban and industrial development patterns associated with the use of water power in manufacturing."

The buildings in the historic district are a mix of mills, mill-owner mansions, worker tenements, and commercial and institutional buildings, nearly all of them built between 1830 and 1934.

Above is the circa-1890 Belding Brothers Silk Mill. Established in Rockville in 1866, the Belding Brothers' company eventually expanded manufacturing operations to Massachusetts, Michigan, California and Canada.

As I was snapping that photo, a guy in a Keith Gauvin Roofing van, who was stopped at a red light, called out to me: "Beautiful buildings, right?" I yelled back that they sure were, and I was trying to shoot as many of them as I could. "I drive by here all the time for work. There's another down that way that got turned into apartments," he said, referring to Loom City Lofts. I told him I'd just come from there. "This town must have been amazing when all the mills were running," he said. I quickly imagined bars, restaurants, banks, social clubs and churches jam-packed with mill workers and their families.

The light turned green and we wished each other a good day. It's always nice to run into someone who appreciates the backside of America as much as I do.

Above, you see the Belding Brothers building at right, connected via pedestrian bridge to the former Rose Silk Mill, which the Belding operation acquired in 1871, according to this web page. There once were other buildings to the right of the Belding complex, between Brooklyn and Grove streets. The smokestack to the left is part of the former Dart Stone Mill.

(Close-up of the pedestrian bridge.)

While the former Minterburn Mill building -- aka Loom City Lofts -- stands apart from the standard red-brick mills in Rockville and in most other old factory towns, the Dart Stone Mill is yet another kind of old industrial beast. Made of light-colored stone and stucco, the Dart buildings date to 1868, according to this Preservation Connecticut web page.

"This mill, erected by Albert Dart in 1868, has the most dramatic setting of any mill in Rockville -- perched on the high rock shelf at the second millseat down from Snipsic Lake," according to the Preservation Connecticut site. "Dart first used the mill for spinning silk, then added shoddy production (shoddy is low-grade cloth made from the by-products of wool pressing). Cyrus White bought the mill in 1870, continuing shoddy production and adding manufacture of cotton warps. In the late l870s White ran six sets of cards for his woolen operation and 4,800 cotton spindles, as well as renting space to the textile firms of J.J. Regan and J.A. Smith and Son. Belding Brothers and Co. bought the mill in 1909."

The Hockanum River runs directly underneath the Dart Stone Mill, which you can sort of see in the photo below.

Below, a view of the Dart Stone Mill from below the falls.

The Dart Stone Mill, the Rose Silk Mill and others are all crowded together, as you can see below.

To the left in the photo above is the old Rose Silk Mill. Below is the main entrance.

The Rose Silk Mill dates to 1867; it was acquired, as mentioned above, by the Belding Brothers in 1871. Below are some more photos of the Rose Silk Mill.

Just north of the Rose Silk Mill is the Hockanum Company mill, which was built in 1865 by the Carlysle Thread Company. Over the decades, the buildings were home to Samuel Fitch and Sons, maker of liners for rubber boots and raincoats; the Hockanum Company; a storage firm; a band practice operation; and more. At some point, it was known as the Daniel's Mill. Below are some shots of this old mill.

Next in the line is a mill complex that, as far as I can tell, is empty.

These buildings were most recently home to Presstek, Inc., which manufactures offset plates and presses. In 2018, that company was acquired by Mark Andy, Inc., a company founded in 1946 in Missouri. I'm guessing a consolidation followed that deal, resulting in the shutdown of this facility.

(Rear of the former Presstek plant.)

In 2016, Presstek acquired analog and digital offset printing plate manufacturer Ano-coil, which had been located at this site since 1958, upon its founding.

Prior to Ano-coil, this site was occupied by textile conglomerate M.T. Stevens from 1934-1951. In 1960, a massive fire destroyed much of the original mill complex, which had been built as the American Mills Company. That business was organized in 1847 to manufacture "woolen textiles, such as cassimeres, and occupied a massive six-story stone and wood mill formerly located east of the present plant," per the Connecticut Mills web site. "The American Mills Company continued to operate and expand its Rockville plant into the early-20th century. In 1918, however, the firm and mill complex were sold to the Hockanum Mill Company, a holding company formed in 1906 that operated three other textile mills in Rockville at the time of the acquisition. The Hockanum Mill Company retained the American Mills Company’s name, management, and some 200 employees, among them being the firm’s 95-year old president George Talcott."

I'm unclear on just how many complexes in Rockville the Hockanum Mill Co. operated at its peak, but it was quite a few.

At the western end of Brooklyn Street, hard by the Hockanum River, is the building below.

Now home to Diversified Welding, the warehouse served as a storage facility for Ladd & Hall, a Vernon-based furniture retailer that went out of business last September after 83 years. I haven't found any further historical information about this property.

Across Vernon Avenue from the old furniture warehouse is the former New England Mill, the lone surviving building of which has been converted to an apartment complex known as Linden Place.

New England Mill Co. was founded in 1836, per this web site, making high-grade woolen cloth.

The Linden building is one of three former mills in the short span between Vernon Avenue and Spring Street that have been redeveloped into living quarters.

The Florence Mill Apartments, below, were erected in 1864.

I know that picture isn't great, but I was battling the sun on this day. Anyway, this wonderful place provides housing for elderly and disabled residents. The mill replaced a textile mill that was destroyed by fire, per Wikipedia. "In 1881, it was described as the largest brick building in Rockville, and continued in the production of textiles. It was purchased in 1881 by White & Corbin, who expanded the building several times, making it the largest manufacturing plant in the United States for the manufacture of envelopes," Wikipedia continues. "The building was used for this purpose by White & Corbin and its successors (including the U. S. Envelope Company), until 1975."

Just steps westward along West Main Street is Springville Mill Apartments.

"The Springville Manufacturing Company constructed a modern brick mill in 1886 at 155 West Main Street," says the Living Places web site. "The building was equipped with automatic sprinklers, elevators and electric lights. It features a five-story stair-and-bell tower with a slate-shingled pyramid crowned by a pair of finials."

Nowadays, apartment dwellers can enjoy a fitness center and in-ground pool.

The final stop on this mill tour is absolutely my favorite, for a number of reasons.

Reason No. 1: The former Hockanum Mill is the oldest surviving textile mill in Rockville, per this handy-dandy web site. "The Hockanum Company was first established in 1838 to manufacture satinet. In 1858, the company began production of high grade cassimeres from domestic and imported wool. By 1903, 400 workers were employed. A brick mill was added in 1881, and a reinforced concrete building in the early 20th century." The complex is located near the western terminus of West Main Street.

(I'm not sure if this house was part of the original mill, nor what its future purpose might be.)

Reason No. 2: This mill complex, which contains multiple buildings and which is much bigger than I initially realized, has been home to the New England Motorcycle Museum since 2018. Ken Kaplan of Kaplan Cycles -- which is located on the museum site -- bought the mill complex in 2013 (I think; that's the year he started the renovation project). Kaplan, who has also been in the computer refurbishment business for more than 30 years, is quite a character, which brings me to Reason No. 3:

Go Kaplan America!

Last year, the museum and business owner starred in his own Discovery Channel show, "Kaplan America." I'm not sure whether the show has been renewed. In 2019, in an effort to promote the show, Kaplan, well, just read this article about him getting arrested.

To fully appreciate the amount of work that went into this project, and that goes into just about large-scale redevelopment of such old mill buildings, check out the video below from the museum:

According to the museum web site, there is a plan to open a brew pub on site; I believe the museum is currently open, but operators have been seeking funds to repair roof damage.

Below is a shot of the motorcycle shop.

This place is a real eye-popping mix of standard brick mill building and bold new art.

I assumed the painting below depicted internationally renowned motorcycle stunt man Evel Knievel. But after watching all the Kaplan America stuff, I'm not so sure it's not a likeness of the museum owner himself.

Make sure to check back for part two of my Rockville story, in which I discover lots of cool, non-woolen mill stuff!