In the 1920s, the American Woolen Company was a giant. It ran around 60 mills across New England and controlled about a fifth of the woolen cloth made in America. Thirty years later, it was nearly bankrupt.

What happened was slow, and then sudden.

The New England mills kept updating their machinery, but they were union shops with high costs. Mills in the South, mostly non-union, could make staple woolens like blankets more cheaply. Two world wars and the Korean War covered the gap with government orders. When those contracts ended after Korea, there was nothing left to cover it.

In 1955, the virtually bankrupt American Woolen Company was bought by Textron and folded into its Amerotron division. The Ayer Mill closed. Thousands of Lawrence residents lost their jobs. The great clock across Union Street fell into disrepair. In 1958, half of the Wood Mill itself was demolished.

For years afterward, the Wood Mill sat underused, a reminder of what Lawrence had been.

But buildings like this are hard to kill. The community raised the money to restore the Ayer clock in 1991. New Balance moved into the Ayer Mill. The Wood Mill was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010, and part of it became more than 200 apartments at Monarch Lofts. And around it all, the mill site is becoming Riverwalk.

The looms are gone. The building, and the city, are still here.

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