Brookside Historic District

Brookside is a small mill village in Westford, Massachusetts, centered on a woolen mill beside Stony Brook. The district contains 29 historic resources: the mill with its brick tower, a ten-foot granite dam, a three-arch granite bridge, a penstock, a social club building and a range of houses. The oldest house dates to about 1725 and was likely the home of a miller. The oldest part of the mill was built of granite around 1862, and a major brick reconstruction followed in 1894 under industrialist George C. Moore, who also built six identical workers' cottages by 1895. The mill was sold to the Bigelow Carpet Company in 1911 and to the Abbot Worsted Company in 1919, which added employee housing on Coolidge Avenue. Although smaller and less intact than the mills in Forge Village and Graniteville, the complex and its surrounding company housing give the village a clear sense of place and record Westford's industrial past.