The Historic Gonic Mill is a former textile mill building that has housed multiple types of manufacturing over the past century. In the early 1830s, Nicholas Varney Whitehouse bought an old sawmill and its water privileges on the Cocheco River in Gonic/Rochester, NH. He began to improve the site and add new ventures. In addition to sawing lumber and making wood products, he operated a grist mill and made linseed oil, plaster, and bricks.
Around 1838 he began making at the Gonic mill equipped with the best machinery available and concentrated on making flannel, the most basic wool used in undergarments and work clothes.
The Gonic Mill was added on in various stages from the early 1900s to the late 1940s, A fire in 1848 destroyed the mill, but in 1849 he rebuilt it. The 51-foot by 81-foot brick building, still part of the Gonic Mill complex, was three stories high, Raw wool was stored in the attic, picked and carded on the third floor, spun on the second, woven on the first, and scoured and finished in the basement. This remarkable building is an example of past meets present with its upcoming conversion into a mixed-use environment.
Since Steve Dumont of Dumont Property Group has owned the 176,000 s/f mill building, it has gone through many changes and this historic mill is still changing from just industrial to a now updated multi-tenanted building.
As for the future development of the mill, Dumont has considered residential apartments and said the integrity of the Gonic Mill would always stay intact. The apartments would come with the traditional open beams, lofts, high ceilings, and brick structures typical of mill-style buildings however, this is just long term plans.
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