complex in Providence.
Mill restorations unearth structures’ industrial past.
Ranne P. Warner sees artistic potential where others might
not – whether it’s a rusted door hinge or an old coal cart.
So the brick skeleton of the old Lebanon Mill in Pawtucket, which Warner is developing into apartments, has been a treasure-trove. She has salvaged a collection of jewelry molds, heating pipes, hinges, doors and elevator wheels from the facility’s manufacturing past to create a custom artsy look for her new apartment building.
“I’m a preservationist and my passion is old mill buildings – I try to save as much as I can,” she said.
With the countless mill restoration projects in the works – driven by a dwindling housing stock and historic tax breaks – developers are discovering architectural and industrial elements from a bygone era. Many of the developers are finding creative ways to give them new life, and antique dealers and salvagers are profiting from the relics pulled from the structures.
“Most of the things I find end up in my treasure room,” said Warner, whose company, Blackstone Exchange in Boston, is converting the abandoned mill into 60 lofts and spaces, called Riverfront Lofts, for the burgeoning arts community in Pawtucket. “I have an old sprinkler valve, a coal car and I’m going to keep them and reuse them to involve the artists and make them into sculptures.”
Warner kept some of the smaller machines from the previous owner, a jewelry manufacturer, as well as hundreds of the jewelry molds she found and boxes of children’s costume jewelry that were left behind.
“We even tried to save a 10,000 gallon oil tank and somehow make that into a sculpture by cutting it in half, but it didn’t work out – oil tanks are an environmental problem,” she said.
Some of the molds will be used for a mural, Warner added. “Each one of the buyers will pick one (mold) they like and it will be their signature by the door.”
All of the wood and metal was saved and reused, Warner said, including the wood floors and the large metal and wooden doors. The industrial metal ones will be used in the loft spaces, she said.
She said there’s nothing left from the textile era except photos that Warner got from a Brown University student who did her thesis on the old mill. Warner said she plans to reinstall the old pipes in the hallways as an industrial mural.
At The Foundry in Providence, Foundry Associates partners Tony Thomas and Tom Guerra have made an effort since they began developing the former Brown & Sharpe complex to preserve as much of its manufacturing history as possible.
At 235 Promenade, old wash basins have found new life as planters in the offices and will serve as water fountains in the apartments that are planned for another part of the complex. Old cranes and their chains left on the site have been painted bright colors and now hang in the powerhouse building, where there is a gym and medical offices.
“A lot of the stuff we’ve kept and used,” said Thomas. “We’ve restored the glass ceilings in part of the complex and an old elevator cab is architecturally magnificent.”
The strangest thing they’ve found so far, according to Guerra, was a collection of grinding wheels, 6 to 8 feet in diameter – probably used to grind metal – uncovered in the parking lot 10 years ago when workers were digging for utility lines.
John Devine, owner of Water Street Antiques in Warren, said he routinely salvages old industrial remnants and has even purchased old factories and other buildings just for the treasures inside.
“I’ve bought buildings and churches just to get the stuff out of them – moldings, cornices, old windows, mantles, lighting from warehouses and old bars,” he said. Sometimes he gets lucky and finds an architectural gold mine – industrial salvage and sales make up 25-30 percent of his business, and sometimes as much as 50 percent if he finds a good building. The mill restoration trend is one that Devine and other dealers are thankful for.
“A lot of the guys are reluctant to sell this stuff now because (mill) revitalization” is very popular, he said. “What used to go to the dump, now people are hoarding.”
Preserving these items is important for history and also for perspective, said Catherine Horsey, executive director of the Providence Preservation Society.
“We save those things because it’s important for us to see how things used to be – often it’s hard to imagine” without a real example, she said.
At the Ashton Mill in Cumberland, which is being converted to apartments by Ohio-based Forest City Enterprises Inc., all of the equipment from prior tenants was removed when they left, or had long since disappeared.
“By the time we acquired the property, it was pretty much cleaned out,” said David Finnegan, marketing and communications manager for the developer’s Boston office.
Brown & Sharpe removed all its machinery when the company left, and artists living in the complex in earlier years regrettably took all of the patents that were left behind, Guerra said. Wood floors, stained-glass doors and original fireplaces in the Promenade Building were also restored.
Processing equipment and looms at Rising Sun Mills in Providence were kept in the basement and top floors of the former National & Worsted Co. textile manufacturing facility, and are being removed or have been tagged and saved for their historic value.
“There was a huge amount of machinery left on the second floor,” said Richard Lehmann, a senior executive for developer Struever Bros. Eccles and Rouse Inc., based in Baltimore. “We contacted the local historic groups and they walked through and tagged some of them for saving.”
Struever Bros. is trying to keep one of the hydroelectric generators from the facility, and is working to put an updated version back into the mills when they’re finished. Other large and small pieces of machinery will be cut up and removed by a demolition crew. A few pieces have asbestos on them, Lehmann said, and must be treated, and the metal will likely be recycled.
Beyond those items, some of which Lehmann said would remain on display in the mills when restoration is completed, anyone who expresses an interest in some of the other items and machinery is welcomed to it. There are old wooden carts, spindles and wooden parts of the machines that would go to a landfill if no one claims them.
“The architect was told to incorporate some of the pieces into the building,”
he said. “I really think people need a sense of where they’re living and what
happened here.”
