Hopewell Mills District

Hopewell Mills is a former cotton-mill village in Taunton, Massachusetts, covering about 12 acres along Bay Street and Albro Avenue. It includes 18 brick and frame buildings and the archaeological remains of the mill on the Mill River. The village began in 1818, when Charles Richmond bought an old cutting mill and dam on a site once used for iron manufacturing. The mill later joined the Taunton Manufacturing Company, a corporate venture that sought to combine the Mill River industries. Most of the village took its present form under superintendent and later owner Charles Albro, who led it from 1854 to 1888. Brick tenements and duplexes housed workers, and a company store and machine shop served the community. The mill burned in 1904. The district keeps its original street pattern and most of its mill housing, and it was listed as a well-preserved example of Taunton's 19th-century industrial villages.