The Sawyer Woolen Mills is a historic
textile mill
Textile manufacturing or textile engineering is a major industry. It is largely based on the conversion of fibre into yarn, then yarn into fabric. These are then dyed or printed, fabricated into cloth which is then converted into useful good ...
complex at 1 Mill Street in
Dover, New Hampshire
Dover is a city in Strafford County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 32,741 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the most populous city in the New Hampshire Seacoast Region (New Hampshire), Seacoast region and ...
. Built in stages between 1873 and 1939, the mill complex is one of New Hampshire's most intact mill complexes, reflecting multiple architectural styles which were retained by addition to the complex rather than by the demolition of older buildings.
The mills were listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
in 1989.
Description
The mill complex occupies on the banks of the
Bellamy River, adjacent to the
Spaulding Turnpike
The Spaulding Turnpike is a controlled-access toll road in eastern New Hampshire. Its entire length is overlapped by New Hampshire Route 16 (NH 16). Its southern terminus is at the Portsmouth Traffic Circle (I-95/ US 1 Byp.) in Portsmouth, a ...
south of downtown Dover. It consists of 15 major buildings, two dams, and four bridges. Only three smaller buildings have been destroyed. There are four large mill buildings in which the textile processing took place, lining the banks of the river, two of which are joined by an ell that spans the river. On the east side of the complex are a series of four warehouses. The 1882 office building is one of the finest mill offices in New England of the period, retaining significant interior decorative detail.
[ The designers of most of the mill buildings are unknown, but the office was designed by Charles E. Joy, a local architect.]["Decorative Brickwork". ''Carpentry and Building'' Dec. 1882: 220. New York.]
History
The Sawyer Woolen Mill Company was established in 1824, and are believed to be the third woolen mill in the state. By 1883 it was the largest manufacturer of woolens in the state, a position it held until it was eclipsed by the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company
The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company was a textile industry, textile manufacturer which founded Manchester, New Hampshire, United States. From modest beginnings it grew throughout the 19th century into the largest cotton textile plant in the world ...
of Manchester
Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...
around 1900. The company was founded by Alfred I. Sawyer and operated in the family until 1899, when it went bankrupt and was acquired by the American Woolen Company. The mill complex was operated by American until it was closed and sold off in 1955. In the mid-1980s the complex was converted to residential use.[
]
See also
* National Register of Historic Places listings in Strafford County, New Hampshire
External links
Sawyer Woolen Mills records
at Baker Library Special Collections, Harvard Business School.
References
{{NRHP in Strafford County, New Hampshire
Industrial buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in New Hampshire
Second Empire architecture in New Hampshire
Buildings and structures in Dover, New Hampshire
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in New Hampshire
National Register of Historic Places in Strafford County, New Hampshire
American Woolen Company
Textile mills in the United States
Woollen mills