Architecture from our Industrial Past: Bates and Androscoggin Mills, Lewiston, Maine

Undated post card showing Bates Mill and canal, Lewiston, Maine (from Wikimedia)

Outflow canal, Upton Mills, Mill St., Lewiston (Kodachrome 64 film, Rolleiflex camera, 75mm lens)

Northern New England (USA) is full of former mill towns with amazing 1800s brick mill buildings. Most of these were built in the early- to mid-1800s on rivers, where water power could power the machinery. Most of these mills spun cotton or wool into textiles, while other factories produced shoes. These industries represent the early flourishing of the industrial revolution in the United States. 

The New England States and northern New York provided a perfect geology for our early industrial expansion because of the steep terrain, dependable rainfall, and hard rock geology. Rivers flowed down over numerous waterfalls where water wheels could be placed and a factory established. Flowing from hard rock terrain, the rivers flowed clean, and hydro projects were not plagued with silt and mud accumulation. Bustling towns grew up around these factories. Being close to the coast, merchants shipped manufactured textiles and other goods to ports like Portland, Portsmouth, Boston, or Providence for transshipment to Europe.

1910 photograph of the Androscoggin River (from Wikimedia)

Lewiston is the largest city in Androscoggin County, Maine. This part of Maine was populated by Quebec families and was incorporated as "Lewistown" in 1795. With the development of mills and the arrival of the railroad, the town boomed economically during the mid-late 1800s, attracting thousands of Quebecers to migrate. French is still commonly spoken. 

The textile industry's profits declined greatly after World War I. Starting in the 1950s, Lewiston's mills started to close (an example of early outsourcing, where textile companies shifted manufacturing to the US South, where labor was cheap and non-unionized). 

The status of these huge mill buildings has been fraught with economic and historic preservation issues. According to Wikipedia:

After a difficult economic period in the 1980s that saw high unemployment and downtown stagnation, several key events have led to economic and cultural growth, including the transformation of the historic Bates Mill Complex. Because the city took over the complex in 1992 after back taxes went unpaid, years of taxpayer frustration in the city's need to maintain the 1.1-million-square-foot (100,000 m2) behemoth led to two referenda (one non-binding vote, the other binding). Voters soundly supported the need to pursue redevelopment by maintaining the property and selling it to private developers. In 2001, the city sold three mill buildings to local developers. In 2003, Platz Associates sold the Bates Mill Complex, with the exception of Mill 5 and a small support building. For the next four years, a number of business enterprises expanded after Platz redeveloped the mill building. The Bates Mill complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in December 2010.

A relative who lives in Lewiston knew the manager of one of the redevelopment projects. His foundation intended to find new tenants for one of the magnificent old Bates Mill buildings. She made the connection and we all had the chance to tour the building and learn about the development plans. He generously let me take photographs inside.

Bates Mill #1 or #5, Canal Street, Lewiston (Ilford XP2 film, Rolleiflex 3.5E Xenotar, 1 sec. exposure)

These views of the cavernous halls give you a sense of the size of this building. Iron posts support huge timber joists, and the tongue-and-groove flooring felt solid enough to support tons of machinery. This was construction from an era when we were proud of what we built, and it was made to last decades.

This photograph shows how the iron posts hold up the ceiling joists. The fluorescent light fixtures would have been a post-World War II addition. The outer wall were brick bearing walls.

Sink for workmen (or ladies) to clean up

Hot water boilers

Former cooler or freezer (unknown purpose)

What an impressive building. I could spend hours wandering around and photographing the structure. The machinery had been removed long before we were there, and none of it was left.

Undated photograph of Androscoggin Mill, photographed by Drew & Worthing, 22 Tremont Street, Boston (from Historic New England, photograph number OVP0241)

After our tour, I drove a short distance west to the old Androscoggin Mills. At its peak, this was another massive complex of buildings, roads, and canals. I do not know how many of the buildings are still standing or which one I tried to check out. The one I approached was locked, but several out buildings were open or partly collapsing.

I tried the door, but it was jammed or locked. And the signs of a security service were a bit ominous.

Heat exchanger? Power House, Androscoggin Mill, Lewiston

Boiler in power house, Androscoggin Mill, Lewiston

This has been a very short tour of the two of the mills in Lewiston, I have more photographs from other towns along the Androscoggin River, but I need to scan them. Some are 120 size Kodachrome transparencies, which are mounted and do not fit in my scanner. A project for the future...

The black and white photographs above are from Ilford XP2 film exposed with a Rolleiflex 3.5E camera. I exposed the film at EI=400. Most exposures were 1 sec. long, and I placed the camera on beams or furniture to brace it. The XP2 has a long tonal range and is very sharp, perfect for this type of subject matter. Problem: when I recently looked at the negatives, they were deep purple color and seemed to be fading. Possibly the film had not been fixed properly. I decided to scan them before they deteriorated further. This is a chromogenic film (like color print film but monochrome only) and is usually considered to be less stable than traditional silver-based black and white film. 

Return to Kuhn Hospital in Black and White XP2 film

About a month ago, three Vicksburg friends and I toured the old and increasingly derelict Kuhn Memorial Hospital, formerly known as the State Charity Hospital. The address is 1422 Martin Luther King Blvd., Vicksburg, Mississippi, if you want to visit the site. I have written about the hulk before, and it is in worse condition than ever. Every bit of copper has been stripped from the inside. The roof is leaking.

This is the view looking out towards MLK Blvd. (formerly Openwod Road) from the hospital's ambulance entry. The house in the distance, possibly Civil War-era, is empty. There used to be another historic house just to the left.

I really like the gloomy old hallways because they lead your eye to the distance and have dramatic patterns of light and shadow.

This is one of the boilers for hot water, laundry, and heat (via radiators). The fuzz looks like fiberglass rather than asbestos.

This is one of the few pieces of furniture left in a 2nd floor room.

Camera notes: I used film in my Fujifilm medium format GW690II rangefinder camera. As an experiment, I tried Ilford XP2, a chromogenic black and white film that is processed in standard C41 chemicals. It is a color print film that has only monochrome dyes in the emulsion. A big advantage of this product is convenience; you can send it to any laboratory that still runs a C41 processing line. I exposed at ISO 200, measuring light with a Gossen Luna-Pro meter in incident mode. I scanned these XP2 negatives at 3200 dpi, but could have scanned at 4800 dpi and extracted even more data. These are resized jpeg files with no tinting or film simulation (after all, this was film). The lens on the Fuji GW690II has amazing resolution.

Conclusion: The XP2 has a long exposure range from pitch dark to glaring white, and it is amazingly fine grain. But, I just do not like the look, so in the future, I will return to using traditional silver-halide film, like Kodak Tri-X. I still have Panatomic-X in the freezer, Kodak's long-discontinued fine-grain ISO 32 film, which I develop in Agfa Rodinal developer.

Previous photographs of the hospital: March 2014;  July 2012
Mississippi Preservation had an article on the hospital in 2010. It describes some of the thinking behind closing the state charity hospitals.

Thanks to Rob Hood of Mississippi Film & Photo, David Childers of Twisted Carnival, and Kassie Childers.

September 3 update:

Here are two more black and white frames, from the former entry hall in the front building

I took these photographs with a 1962-vintage Leica M2 camera and a 35mm f/2.0 Summicron Type 4 lens. The film was Kodak BWC, also a C-41-processed film. In 35mm format, the chromogenic film may be more successful than in 120 format. The current name for this film is BW400CN. Kodak has discontinued it, so I recommend you stock up for future use.

Update

As of March 2019, the Kuhn Hospital has been totally demolished.