The Wood Mill you see today is only half of the building William Wood opened in 1906.

At its peak, the complex was twice its current size. On the river side stood three more sections, labeled A, B and C, across a railroad spur. Covered bridges carried people and goods over the tracks between them and the rest of the mill.

Then came 1958. The American Woolen Company was gone, bought by Textron in 1955, and Lawrence was losing its mill jobs. That year, the north wing of the Wood Mill, the side along the river, was torn down. Half the mill came down lengthwise, and the riverside land became parking.

Photographs of the demolition survive in the American Textile History Museum collection, now at Cornell University Library. The same collection holds photos from October 1905 of the mill being built, so the beginning and the end of that wing were both recorded half a century apart.

You can still find traces of what was lost. On the river-facing wall of the surviving mill, look for a few bricked-up window bays. Those are where the covered bridges once joined the sections that are gone.

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