Dorchester-Milton Lower Mills Industrial District

Along both banks of the Neponset River, where Boston's Dorchester neighborhood meets the town of Milton, stands a group of red brick mills built mostly between 1868 and the 1930s. Most belonged to the Walter Baker Chocolate Company, whose product grew out of water-powered chocolate making that began on the river in 1765. The district also holds the Mason Regulator Company building, a Queen Anne structure of 1888. The mills were largely designed by the firm of Nathanial J. Bradlee and its successors, and they show a progression from Second Empire to Romanesque Revival to Georgian and Renaissance Revival styles while keeping a coherent look. A power house of 1906 electrified the plant, and a concrete grain elevator painted with the Baker name is a local landmark. The site's rapids drew mill builders as early as 1634, when Israel Stoughton built a grist mill here. Baker moved its operations to Delaware in 1965, and the buildings now serve varied commercial uses.