Gasometer

This twelve-sided structure with hipped roof was once a new type of fuel storage building. Originally a windowless, paneled-brick polygon set on a stone rubble base, it was designed as a shelter against ice formation for an iron drum that held coal gas. Woonsocket once had three of these; gas was used for lighting the mills as early as the 1850s and for most houses and streetlights in the 1860s. Many of the larger or more isolated mills had their own gasometers during the late nineteenth century; one exists at the Wanskuck Mill in Providence). The Woonsocket structure is the only extant example in Rhode Island built by a public utility. With the tank removed, its brick shell now serves as offices.