City Walks – Yet Another Mill

Old School Industry Exposed

Last fall I walked by another old 19th Century mill complex that is slowly being restored. The buildings are huge, they’ve often suffered a lot over the years, and of course the financial issues can be enormous, so all of this takes much longer than it took to build them in the first place.

This one building in the complex which has been fully restored and now has tenants.

And this is the patio in the back of one building which contains a pricey restaurant that opens outside in warmer weather.

And nearby there are houses which were originally homes for workers, rented out by the mill owners.

And here is a large mill building which is still under reconstruction.

The design of the building is pretty astounding for something that was purely industrial. In contrast to modern factories which tend to be mostly closed up, here the huge windows let in natural light, possibly because artificial gaslight may well have added additional fire hazards, and there would have been an incentive to minimize it.

What’s more is that the windows were arched, which would have added cost and complexity compared to a simple rectangle. Although it’s also possible that the arch would have added useful stability to such a big opening in a wall like that. At any rate, it’s impressive to see how well all of that brickwork has held up.

Curiously, there seems to be a door in the middle of the window. You can also see spikes added to the bottom to keep birds from roosting, although nothing would stop them from flying through all of the missing panes.

Here’s a closer peek through one of the windows.

And here you can see how complex the interior framework is. If you walk into a modern acre-sized mega store or airport, there’s much more open space, which is probably due to old buildings like this depending on weaker materials like cast iron and wood, as well as much heavier roofs.

You can see at the top of this photo how much wood was used, and you can get a sense of how big those wooden beams are. So many more big cheap trees in those days.