{"id":45074,"date":"2023-08-03T09:56:34","date_gmt":"2023-08-03T13:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelandmark.com\/?p=45074"},"modified":"2023-08-03T09:56:34","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T13:56:34","slug":"iconic-east-princeton-building-succumbs-to-age-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/2023\/08\/03\/iconic-east-princeton-building-succumbs-to-age-weather\/","title":{"rendered":"Iconic East Princeton building succumbs to age, weather"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ken Cleveland<\/em>
\nLandmark correspondent<\/em><\/p>\n

PRINCETON \u2014 Since the 1840s, East Princeton was home to three chair-making factories, with the Keyes Brook powering the mills. That was until the last factory burned in the first decade of the 1900s and the industry moved to Gardner, using electricity instead of water power.<\/p>\n

The barn at the corner of Main Street and Leominster Road for many years served as a way station. Finished chairs, largely from the Stuart Factory complex based on Gleason Road, were brought to the barn before being loaded onto wagons to be conveyed to the West Sterling railroad station. The chairs then made their way to customers across the country as well as stately homes in Boston.<\/p>\n

The years were rough on the old building once the factories stood idle.<\/p>\n

The barn in recent decades suffered from decay. With roof breaches, New England weather slowly took its toll. Tarps provided temporary protection, but when those disintegrated, the framework of rafters finally became visible.<\/p>\n

In June, workers started removing pieces of the building, including old roofing elements; others then moved on to old hardware that could be reused.<\/p>\n

Finally, it was time for the more dramatic dismantling to commence.<\/p>\n

As July continues with torrential rain of the type that doomed the building, the tower structure was removed and the building opened. A back addition came down, showing off structural components harvested when New England still produced chestnut trees.<\/p>\n

What was left was a heap of posts, beams and siding.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf more had been done in the past,\u201d part owner Alex Stanton lamented as he cut back dead branches on nearby trees.<\/p>\n

Maintenance could have saved the building from the fate that an open roof causes with rain and snow compromising the wood.<\/p>\n

The damage had been done long before Stanton became an owner last year, but he faced the chore of seeing the building dismantled before it collapsed.<\/p>\n

Stanton said the plan is to fill the foundation, possibly building a storage shed.<\/p>\n

The buildings in the area, colloquially known as The Beehive to East Princeton residents, feature several rental units, among them what used to be the Temple Lamson Union Store when the mills were running, feeding the growth of East Princeton. Many of the houses along Main Street were built in that 1840s-1850s era for owners and workers.<\/p>\n

Another store a few houses away continued into the 1970s. An auxiliary chapel of the Congregational Church, and the iconic 1850s Mechanics Hall with its columns that included classrooms and meeting space, served the factories that put the little town on the map.<\/p>\n

All were part of the bustling neighborhood, with names like Stuart, Temple and Lamson running the mills.<\/p>\n

A tenant said the barn had been coming down and residents had seen the continuing decay, but the building also gave up bits of its past. From glass fire extinguishers to small toy items lost in the building, they remained forgotten for years, many having fallen through floorboards into the collection of history below the structure.<\/p>\n

Bits of the building may end up being repurposed, as collectors, salvage firms or historical societies find stories from the past in everyday items.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ken Cleveland Landmark correspondent PRINCETON \u2014 Since the 1840s, East Princeton was home to three chair-making factories, with the Keyes Brook powering the mills. That was until the last factory burned in the first decade of the 1900s and the industry moved to Gardner, using electricity instead of water power. The barn at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}