Apartments (Clarkville Mill)

This early clapboard mill, with a narrow trapdoor monitor which has been boarded over centered in the roof probably originated as the center section, to which additions were made at either end. Much rebuilt, it replaced a predecessor dating back to 1818 which burned. If the factory as it now exists looks older than 1864, this appearance could well result from the partial retention or imitation of an earlier phase of the building. After a succession of owners, it became part of the White organization, based in Chepachet. As now remodeled for apartments it has lost much of its architectural interest, but it does indicate the nature and scale of small industrial operations during the early nineteenth century in a setting which is still isolated. Moreover, the millpond dam and raceway are close by and substantially intact, though overgrown. Two clapboard workers' duplexes exist up the hill farther north on Pulaski Road, but the village church has disappeared. Still other textile manufacturers took over from White, then a furniture factory, before the mill was revamped, and this tiny mill village lost its initial reason for being.