Ware Millyard Historic District

Along both banks of the Ware River in Ware, Massachusetts, a cluster of brick and granite mills forms the core of a historic industrial district. Its buildings date from about 1825 to 1939, with most built in the second half of the 19th century. The oldest is the Ware Manufacturing Company store and counting room, the only documented survivor of the earliest factory village. Otis Company Mill #1, a granite structure from about 1845 attributed to builder Nathaniel Dudley Goodell, is the oldest mill in town and its only large stone industrial building. Other structures include a repair shop, boiler house, powerhouse, dye house and finishing buildings. The district also takes in company housing on streets such as Canal Street, community institutions, Nenameseck Park with its cast iron fence and fountain, and the upper dam that controlled water power. The mills are valued less for stylistic flourish than for their surviving original materials, including brick walls, multi-light wooden sash and stone details, and for the engineering of the river dams.