history
Detail showing Griswold Cotton Mill (foreground).
T
he Connecticut River bends sharply south through a steeply sided valley, over bedrock outcroppings and around the village of Turners Falls. This unique location on the river was an important Native American center for diplomacy and trade for over ten-thousand years prior to European settlement. Originally constructed in the late 1700s for transportation, the Turners Falls canal fell into disuse when railroads took over many transportation needs in the 1840s. The canal and dam were rebuilt in the 1860s as part of industrialist Alvah Crocker’s vision for a completely planned industrial community. The core of the plan was based on inexpensive hydro-power to attract mill industries to the village. The plan supported business development with a walkable street grid that included a 90-foot-wide commercial main avenue located between in-town employee housing and the mill sites on an island between the canal and the river. Like many communities throughout Massachusetts and other parts of the country, the industrial manufacturing that characterized towns like Turners Falls now leaves a legacy of significant physical structures that can be creatively reused in ways that respond to current economic and social trends. Birds-eye perspective (1877). Source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.
Griswold Cotton Mill, originally built in 1874, was a production center for cotton bandages, bunting, and cheesecloth until the 1940s. After the mill closed, it became the Rockdale Department Store, and then for many years it housed Railroad Salvage. The property has been owned by Kosudaville, LLC since 2001.
GRISWOLD COTTON MILL
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