Auburn is a city in south-central Maine, within the United States. The city serves as the county seat of Androscoggin County. The population was 24,061 at the 2020 census. Auburn and its sister city Lewiston are known locally as the Twin Cities or Lewiston–Auburn (L–A).
Lewiston is the second most populous city in the U.S. state of Maine and the most central city in Androscoggin County. The city lies halfway between Augusta, the state's capital, and Portland, the state's most populous city. It is one-half of the Lewiston-Auburn Metropolitan Statistical Area, commonly referred to as "L/A." or "L-A." Lewiston exerts a significant impact upon the diversity, religious variety, commerce, education, and economic power of Maine. It is known for an overall low cost of living, substantial access to medical care, and a low violent-crime rate. In recent years, the city of Lewiston has also seen a spike in economic and social growth. While the dominant language spoken in the city is English, it is home to a significant Somali population as well as the largest French-speaking population in the United States while it is second to St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, in percentage of speakers.
Lowell National Historical Park is a National Historical Park of the United States located in Lowell, Massachusetts. Established in 1978 a few years after Lowell Heritage State Park, it is operated by the National Park Service and comprises a group of different sites in and around the city of Lowell related to the era of textile manufacturing in the city during the Industrial Revolution. In 2019, the park was included as Massachusetts' representative in the America the Beautiful Quarters series.
The Boston Manufacturing Company was a business that operated one of the first factories in America. It was organized in 1813 by Francis Cabot Lowell, a wealthy Boston merchant, in partnership with a group of investors later known as The Boston Associates, for the manufacture of cotton textiles. It built the first integrated spinning and weaving factory in the world at Waltham, Massachusetts, using water power. They used plans for a power loom that he smuggled out of England as well as trade secrets from the earlier horse-powered Beverly Cotton Manufactory, of Beverly, Massachusetts, of 1788. This was the largest factory in the U.S., with a workforce of about 300. It was a very efficient, highly profitable mill that, with the aid of the Tariff of 1816, competed effectively with British textiles at a time when many smaller operations were being forced out of business. While the Rhode Island System that followed was famously employed by Samuel Slater, the Boston Associates improved upon it with the "Waltham System". The idea was successfully copied at Lowell, Massachusetts, and elsewhere in New England. Many rural towns now had their own textile mills.
The history of Lowell, Massachusetts, is closely tied to its location along the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River, from being an important fishing ground for the Pennacook tribe to providing water power for the factories that formed the basis of the city's economy for a century. The city of Lowell was started in the 1820s as a money-making venture and social project referred to as "The Lowell Experiment", and quickly became the United States' largest textile center. However, within approximately a century, the decline and collapse of that industry in New England placed the city into a deep recession. Lowell's "rebirth", partially tied to Lowell National Historical Park, has made it a model for other former industrial towns, although the city continues to struggle with deindustrialization and suburbanization.
The Mine Falls Gatehouse is a dam gatehouse in Mine Falls Park in Nashua, New Hampshire. It was built in 1886 by the Nashua Manufacturing Company to regulate water flow from the mill yard. The company relied on water flow to provide power to its mill. In 1987 the gatehouse was included in the Nashua Manufacturing Company Historic District and listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing property.
The Bates Mill is a textile factory company founded in 1850 and located at 35 Canal Street in Lewiston, Maine. The mill served as Maine's largest employer through the 1860s, and early profits from the mill provided much of the initial capital for nearby Bates College. Currently, the mill buildings are home to several new businesses, apartments, and a small museum.
The Androscoggin Mill Block is an historic tenement house at 269-271 Park Street in Lewiston, Maine, United States. The two-story brick building was one of several built in 1866 by the Androscoggin Mill Company to provide housing for workers with families, and is one of only three such 19th-century buildings to survive in the city. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.
The Continental Mill Housing buildings are a pair of historic mill worker housing blocks at 66-82 Oxford Street in Lewiston, Maine. The Greek Revival/Italianate housing units were built in 1866, and are all that remain of a large number of similar buildings that once lined Oxford Street. These two buildings were listed the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The Boott Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts were a part of an extensive group of cotton mills, built in 1835 alongside a power canal system in this important cotton town. Its incorporators were Abbott Lawrence, Nathan Appleton, and John Amory Lowell, and is named after Kirk Boott, the first Agent of the Proprietors of Locks & Canals in Lowell. Today, the Boott Mills complex is the most complete remainder of antebellum textile mills built in Lowell. The original Mill No. 6 is managed by the National Park Service unit Lowell National Historical Park and houses the Boott Cotton Mills Museum and the Tsongas Industrial History Center for K-12 educational programs.
Fall River Bleachery is an historic textile bleachery on Jefferson Street in Fall River, Massachusetts.
The Billerica Mills Historic District is a historic district between the Concord River, Treble Cove Terrace, Kohlrausch Avenue, Indian Road, Holt Ruggles, and Rogers Streets in the village of North Billerica, Massachusetts.
The Wamesit Canal-Whipple Mill Industrial Complex is a historic mill and canal at 576 Lawrence Street in Lowell, Massachusetts. This industrial area of Lowell, located on the Concord River, underwent a major expansion from a more modest millworks in the mid-19th century by Oliver Whipple, a manufacturer of gunpowder.
The Saco–Pettee Machine Shops is a historic factory complex at 156 Oak Street in the Newton Upper Falls area of Newton, Massachusetts. Although the area has an industrial history dating to the early 19th century, the oldest buildings in this complex, consisting of about thirteen brick buildings, were built in 1892. The property, a major economic force in the development of Newton Upper Falls, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. It was home to Clark's N.A., the North American home base to Clark's Shoes, makers of fine footwear, until they relocated to Waltham Ma. in October 2016.
The Saco-Lowell Shops was once one of the largest textile machine manufacturers in the United States. It was formed in 1912 with a merger between the Lowell Machine Shop with the Saco-Pettee Machine Company. At its peak in the 1920s, the company had manufacturing facilities in Lowell and Newton, Massachusetts, and Biddeford, Maine. The company maintained their executive office at 77 Franklin Street in Boston, and also had a southern office in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The Winooski Falls Mill District is located along the Winooski River in the cities of Winooski and Burlington, Vermont, in the United States of America. It encompasses a major industrial area that developed around two sets of falls on the river in the 19th century.
The Nashua Manufacturing Company Historic District in Nashua, New Hampshire, is a historic district that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1987. It encompasses an area just west of downtown Nashua, roughly located along the southern bank of the Nashua River, bordered on the west side by Mine Falls Park, on the south side by the Nashua River canal, up to Ledge Street, and from the east side by Factory, Pine and Water streets, up to the Main Street bridge.
The Newichawannock Canal is a man-made canal which drains Great East Lake into Horn Pond at the border between Wakefield, New Hampshire, and Acton, Maine, in the northeastern United States. It is at the head of the Salmon Falls River, which the Abenaki called Newichawannock, meaning "river with many falls". Begun in 1850 by the Great Falls Company to increase the water available for its mills in Somersworth, New Hampshire, the 0.75-mile (1.21 km) canal is unusual as it was built for strictly industrial purposes in an area remote from the actual industrial site. The canal forms the boundary between the states of New Hampshire and Maine, and is spanned by a stone bridge built at the same time. The canal and bridge, along with related artifacts, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.
The Salmon Falls Mill Historic District encompasses a historic mill complex on Front Street in Rollinsford, New Hampshire. The complex includes four major structures and seven smaller ones, on about 14 acres (5.7 ha) of land along the Salmon Falls River. They were built between about 1840 and the mid-1860s, and have an unusual architectural unity, for additions made to the buildings were done with attention to matching design elements from the existing structures. The Number 2 Mill, built in 1848, was an early location where a turbine was used instead of a waterwheel to provide power to the mill machinery. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
Amos DeForest Lockwood (1811–1884) was an American manufacturer and engineer based in Providence, Rhode Island. He was self-trained as a mechanical engineer, and gradually expanded his scope to all areas of textile mill construction. He was a cofounder, in 1882, of Lockwood, Greene & Company, which would become one of the largest engineering firms in the United States in the twentieth century.
