Winooski: The Mill City on the Falls
Near Burlington, Vermont
The Winooski River drops sharply here, and for more than a century that drop ran the looms of one of New England's largest textile complexes. The Winooski Falls Mill District grew from early sawmills and textile mills into a sprawling industrial city within a city, eventually anchored by the American Woolen Company, which made woolen cloth.
At its peak the mills employed well over a thousand workers, many of them French-Canadian immigrants for factory wages. The tight-knit neighborhood they built gave Winooski its enduring character, small, dense, and distinctly Catholic, with a main street lined by social clubs and parish churches.
The mills closed through the mid-twentieth century as southern competition undercut New England textile prices. The brick mill buildings sat vacant for decades before a long redevelopment converted them into apartments, shops, and offices. The falls still churn beneath the same brick walls. The looms are gone but the architecture remembers.
