Millville Village

Millville separated from Blackstone in 1916 and was incorporated as its own town, but after the Great Depression of 1929 both mills ceased operations, the town declared bankruptcy in 1933, and the Massachusetts Municipal Finance Commission controlled it until 1945 while vacant commercial buildings and empty houses were removed and many families left to find work elsewhere. Millville never regained a flourishing industry and became a bedroom town, though in 1946 the mill properties were sold and subdivided for small private operations. Flood destroyed a large portion of the Felting Mill in 1938, and fire claimed the last buildings of the sprawling U.S. Rubber Company in 1978, further altering the town's industrial, commercial, and residential landscape. Even so, surviving domestic architecture still reflects Millville's place in the heritage of the Blackstone Valley. The Longfellow School Yard and its surroundings reflect Millville's history from early industrial development along the Blackstone River to the present. The river gave Millville its reason for being by supplying water power for early mills, and the river valley served as a transportation corridor linking the village with neighboring towns and the regional industrial economy by road, then canal, and later railroad. With a river crossing established there in the eighteenth century, Millville became a small but important regional transportation center. Its heritage joined agriculture and industry as growth spread from farming areas and outward from the river, a Mill Village emerged, early mill operations gave way to thriving industries, and churches, schools, hotels, social halls, commercial blocks, residences, and the homes of mill officials and workers together formed the fabric of the town.

Millville, Massachusetts · United States