Schwamb Mill
Year Passes With Brighter Future By Patricia Fitzmaurice On the first anniversary of our existence, it seems appropriate to submit to your readers a brief progress report on The Old Schwamb Mill preservation project, which got off the ground with thanks almost entirely to The Arlington Advocate's immediate and generous editorial support.
The August 7, 1969 issue's front page story about the Mill and demolition plans for it awakened local readers to the urgency of the situation: There was a threat to destroy some of the last remaining physical evidence of the social and economic history of this town and of New England.
Picked up from the Advocate, subsequent coverage by other newspapers and television provided the wider moral support we so much needed to augment the professional evaluations already provided by Old Sturbridge Village, the Smithsonian Institution, The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, and the Massachusetts Historical Commission at the State House.
This effort has been for some time the official concern of the Arlington Conservation Commission which, among other things, considers the visual fabric of the community.
The Old Schwamb Mill on Mill Lane, off Lowell st., has been the scene of a thriving 122-year old woodworking and finishing business specializing in museum-quality handcrafted oval and circular picture frames and the highest quality straight picture frame moulding in the country. Before that there had been on the site successively a spice mill and a pre-1700 grist mill, whose stone foundations are, in part at least, the present 1860 building's foundation.
To power their saws and lathes, the Schwambs first used water, carrying it underground from their acre and a half mill pond in the area bounded by Lowell st., Park ave., and Mass. ave. The water left the Mill through sluice gates and emptied into Mill Brook. The water turbine is still in place and will some day be reactivated for its historical interest. Its use was replaced by steam power late in the last century and by electricity in the 1950's.
All lumber, much of it black walnut in the old days, was purchased green and carefully dried under rigid controls over an 8-week period in the dry kiln, whose brick smokestack stands as a landmark for the last surviving dry kiln in this part of the country. It has not been used for about three years, since brothers Clinton and Louis Schwamb died.
Fifty to 75 men worked in this mill at a time, many of them local people but many others coming out from the city each day by horse car and later electric trolley car. They worked the customary long hours of the times.
It is interesting to note that as our preservation efforts reached wider recognition through the Boston Globe, WBZ-TV, and WNAC-TV, several former employees came to the Mill to talk about old times in Arlington and particularly at the Mill. One, who stacked lumber in the 110 degree dry kiln in the summer of 1917, emphasized what the others had told us, that he remembered the Schwambs not only for maintaining strict and high standards of workmanship but for their exceptional fairness to employees.
In preserving an old mill, there is always the question of what to do with it. Some of the most beautiful in New England, the Blackstone Valley's classical-style granite textile mills topped with goldleafed Bullfinch-inspired cupolas, and the brick and granite textile mills of the Merrimack Valley, all with their beautifully laid out canals and water courses, are having their desperate survival problems.
Considering these magnificent monuments, Arlington's red-stained wooden mill building with its added wings and other "improvements" might appear to some to be a stepchild of the New England mill life development.
As it stands, the Mill represents part of the memory of thousands of people who have grown up in its vicinity and for whom certain buildings, streets, and contours of land not only mean home but mean that Arlington has a recognizable face that is uniquely and distinctly ours and sets us off from every other town in the world.
Across the 3000 miles of this country, there are many faceless communities where in the face of demolition and subsequent construction of "economically-designed" uninspired. monotonous buildings there are not only no clues for a stranger to know where he is, but there is no way for even the local inhabitants to have any feeling for how the community evolved and what makes it special or different from any other place.
Let us acknowledge here that what the Larson Brothers and their cousin Harold Larson have done in relinquishing for preservation the Old Schwamb Mill property, which they has purchased a year ago for demolition, is an historic first step on the part of local businessmen and developers to maintain Arlington's unique visual quality.
John Wilfert's cooperation with those concerned with the Pleasant st. approach to the center is a second such historic step which will set a pattern for other developing communities as well as ourselves to follow.
Since the Conservation Commission, and therefore the Town, could not act with the speed required in such an emergency, The Schwamb Mill Preservation Trust was formed to acquire and preserve the Old Schwamb Mill. This Trust bought from Harold Larson for $30,000 in January only the 3-story principal mill building and the brook section running behind it. Funds were raised through individual private donations and loans, grants from the Permanent Charity Fund, the Sarah Hyams Fund, Harvard Trust Co., and an as yet unrepaid $13,000 loan from a conservation education foundation.
Members of the Trust include Arlington Selectman William S. Abbott, Conservation Commission members Dr. Philip S. Thayer (chairman) and David D. Wallace, former member Rudolph Kass, who is also president of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, associate members Doris E. Atwater and Mrs. John A. Fitzmaurice (member of the newly appointed Historical Commission, the warrant article which the Mill trustees brought into Town Meeting), and fourth generation former Mill owner, Elmer C. Schwamb.
The trustees have each committed themselves financially and to all aspects of it have each given time and service for which no member is paid.
The lot in front of the Mill, starting 10 feet from the building, where the holding pond is seen in old photographs, has been retained by Harold Larson for construction of a storage facility for his business. However, he is willing to let the Mill have the lot if it can obtain for him elsewhere, but not necessarily in Arlington, a comparable piece of property.
The Trust has been working on the possibility of 6,000 to 8,000 sq. ft. of land in one of the outlying towns coming as a gift presented by anyone willing and able to do so. The Trust is non-profit, charitable-educational, which means that gifts to it are tax-exempt.
All the former Schwamb land on the opposite side of Mill Lane, on the left in old photographs, is still owned by Larson Brothers Realty Trust. Since last December, the Trust has been renting from them the wood-storage barn and the dry house, which contains the facilities for heating the Mill.
There are certain indications from the Larsons that in developing their property they are willing to sell off for preservation the section containing the barn and dry kiln and the section of Mill Brook still open on their land.
The barn was used this summer for young people's pottery and sculpture classes, which will continue this fall in the fine arts and craft program developing at the Mill.
The Craft Center concept is a natural development in our historic preservation and living industrial museum plan, since it responds to the needs and desires of so many people in this area, without requiring any physical changes to the buildings' character.
It is an appropriate way to use the mellow interior spaces, which had become emptier and emptier in recent years as modern technology and the emergence of the Plastic Age left only the discriminating relatively few as ultimate purchasers of luxury wood products like Schwamb frames.
As a living museum, the Mill is continuing in a small way the hand crafting of oval and circular frames, most of which are sent to New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles for gold-leafing and further embellishment with eagles or other decorations, to be sold through such outlets as Williamsburg Restoration Craft House as authentic reproductions of cherished museum-piece mirrors.
This is definitely non-profit, as the market for such luxury is small, and the mill's production does not support building maintenance and improvement, or rental of the two small Larson buildings.
It does keep running, however, the unique machinery, which we purchased from Elmer Schwamb last August before the Trust thought it had a chance of saving the Mill, and Demolition Day loomed imminently. Funds raised from individuals at that time also financed filming of an archival record of the Mill and its craft activity. The movie will be ready for national distribution when more money becomes available to finish it.
More urgent needs now are for building improvements, plumbing and connection to the town sewer line, insulation, storm windows, automatic heat. Next important are maintenance needs: exterior painting, removal of asbestos siding and repair or replacement of clapboards underneath, both considered sprucing up or cosmetic treatment, but important for the Mill's image if historic preservation is to mean anything in this community.
The Trust would welcome volunteer assistance on these projects but are realistically approaching foundations for financial grants to carry the load. Funds are being sought also from the federal government through the Town's Historical Commission.
Off and on, a number of volunteers have been manning the office, typing, cleaning the buildings and organizing the contents, raking, making repairs, keeping machinery in condition, and professionally finishing frames.
With this help, the Trust has recently opened up mostly unused areas for artist-craftsmen who have sought space in the Mill in connection with the education program. There are two groups of professional potters who are building the first gas-fired kilns in this area, a leatherworker, and a maker of historical stringed instruments.
Non-resident teachers of proposed classes include a gold- and silversmith, a fine arts professor and portrait painter, a gilder, a calligrapher teaching chancery script, a weaver, a noted water-colorist in the Wyeth style, and an authority on the restoration of antique furniture.
With the education program well underway after a successful trial season of classes in pottery, silver jewelry, and furniture repair, a wider range of charitable foundations can be approached for financial aid than when the Trust was looking for purely historic preservation and conservation funds.
The Mill can meet the needs of a great many people for whom the very convenience near home of an opportunity to explore the artist-craftsman's world and to try their own hand at creative expression could be their stepping stone toward a more interesting and happier life.
While classes are arranged for all ages, the Mill is particularly anxious to provide this opportunity for young adults, or teenagers, whose "there's no opportunity to express creativity" has been heard.
As the Trust enters the second preservation year of The Old Schwamb Mill, it is confident that funds will materialize for the needs. And it wishes to thank all who have supported it so generously and urge only that those who can help us further in any way will continue to do so.
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