Upriver History: Broad Brook's stone woolen mill, from Civil War cloth to car upholstery
The Main Street mill ran for more than a century before closing in 1954.
EAST WINDSOR - For more than a century, a stone woolen mill on Main Street in Broad Brook turned out cloth, from woolen goods for the Union Army to fabric sold to automakers, according to the complex's 1985 National Register of Historic Places nomination.
Epaphras L. Phelps and Bethuel Phelps began buying the site's gristmill, sawmill, tannery and water rights in the 1830s and formed the Phelps Manufacturing Co. After that firm ran into money trouble in the late 1840s, the newly organized Broad Brook Company took over. Its first president was George Beach, whose family's interests were among the Phelps company's creditors, the nomination says.
In 1849 the mill had 4,900 spindles, 102 looms and 250 employees. An autumn 1869 flood took out every dam and bridge on Broad Brook from above the mill to the Scantic River, causing a long shutdown and leading the company to buy a 250-horsepower steam engine. The dam at the bridge was finished in 1870.
The nomination calls the mill's stone construction unusual for a central Connecticut factory.
In 1952 the company sold 703,743 yards of cloth to General Motors and 876,740 yards to the U.S. government. The nomination points to carmakers' shift from cloth upholstery to vinyl as a devastating change. The mill's last day of operation was Feb. 22, 1954, and Hamilton Standard bought the property that year.
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