It was an unseasonably cold morning and we had some free time, so we drove around on a whim and ended up in Harrisville, an old mill town that looks like it slid off a vintage postcard. After strolling the few short streets, we stopped for lunch at the Harrisville General Store where I asked a pleasant-looking woman at the next table what the town used to mill. I had chosen wisely. Not only did she tell us about the wool milling history of the town and the sheep farms that once surrounded it, but after a bit of chat, we found out that she’s our seasonal park ranger’s childhood best friend’s mom. (You get that?)
In fact, our seasonal park ranger had grown up in the middle of tiny Harrisville, and this woman’s house was pretty much his second home! What are the odds? We had a good time talking all about it with him later that afternoon. It sounds like it was an amazing place to grow up. Small towns and small worlds.
We went back the next day to tour the town properly and follow their walking tour. We stopped inside Cheshire Mill Number 1 (built later by the Colony family) to check out the photos in the Historic Harrisville archives, but it was closed so we just wandered a bit to look at the the photos and exhibits lining the walls. On his way to something else, the man who has done the bulk of the restoration work on the town’s association-owned mills and buildings stopped to say hello and ask if we had any questions. Well, of course we did.
Seeing that our interest was genuine, he told us about the history of the restoration process, the challenges they’ve faced restoring the buildings while also making them useable for modern use, detailed some terrifying close calls (like when a boiler came this close to exploding and taking the whole town with it), and repairing many of the “improvements” made to the structures over time. Let’s just say that structural support elements shouldn’t be removed willy-nilly. I could have listened to him for days. In the end, he passed us over to a coworker who he said knew the building’s mechanical systems better than anyone. She took us on a grand tour of Mill No. 1, explained the old and new generator systems, told us about some about the town’s interpersonal dynamics, and strongly encouraged us to come back to view things in the archives.
Fun fact, when it came time to restore Mill No. 1’s cupola, it weighed 9 tons as the crane removed it. It weighed 19 tons when restored to its original specs. Yes, that’s right, 10 tons of structural support material had been chopped out over time. It had acquired a serious tilt by the 1970s. It’s a true miracle that the cupola hadn’t already tumbled down. Mill No. 1 needed to be re-level through a series of incremental lifts, once the internal supports were reinstalled, to keep it from collapsing in upon itself.
Like all their buildings, the namesake Harris family build simple, federalist-style homes from local red brick with twin fireplaces at either end. You see a version of this simple design in additional homes, large and small, throughout the village.
Although the church and vestry (now the library) branched a bit into Greek revival, some of the underlying Harris structural elements are still there.
A primary reason that Harrisville has attained federally recognized historical status is because a sizable portion of its employee housing remains intact. It’s easy to get interested in the impressive manufacturing buildings, the picturesque ponds, and the prodigious homes of the wealthy owners, but it’s worth remembering that it was the people who worked the looms, who carded the wool, and who kept the machines humming that made mill towns across New England thrive. Mill worker housing ranged from men’s and women’s dormitories, to small wood-framed worker’s cottages and duplexes, all the way up to red brick manager bungalows.
Back at the trailer, I listened to the audio tour when I had better cell service. There are virtual and audio tour links here, if you’re interested in learning more about Harrisville.
Stay curious, my friends.
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