Dodgeville Painters — South Main Street mill village

The Dodgeville Mill, at 453 South Main Street about two miles from downtown, is the oldest surviving textile factory in Attleboro, according to its 2018 National Register registration form. Work at the mill began in 1809. By 1834 the village around it had 260 residents living in fifteen tenements, and by 1854 the Dodge company owned 56 tenements.

B.B. & R. Knight Co. then ran the mill from 1854 to 1920. The registration form credits the Knight years with 48 new dwellings and a remodeling of the existing tenements; in 1920 the mills, the tenements and the company's farmland were all sold to Consolidated Textile. What survives today, per the 2018 form, is a mid- and late-19th-century village of about 23 mill houses, four stores and a former Methodist church now used as a home, strung along South Main Street on three sides of the mill and its roughly 20-acre pond.

Vinyl over the old walls

The 2018 survey found many of the mill houses altered with vinyl siding and replacement windows. On those houses the paintable surface may be only the doors, porch parts, railings and any trim left uncovered. Original wood and its old coatings may still sit underneath, which matters if a repair opens a wall.

Not listed, but historically significant

The houses were left out of the mill's 2018 listing, though the form says they would likely count as contributing buildings in a larger district. No such district has been created as far as our research shows. Where a house still shows its original wood, paint protects it and keeps it visible, while another layer of siding would hide it.

Pond and river damp

Dodgeville Pond and the Ten Mile River sit beside the mill, and the village houses line South Main Street around it. The mill yard sits on a terrace about fifteen feet below the road. For a house near the water or down a slope, check moisture readings on the wood before priming and plan dry days for the shaded walls.

Lead in mill-era paint

The surviving houses date from the mid- and late 1800s, so their lower paint layers may contain lead; a test settles it. Scraping, sanding or replacing trim on any pre-1978 home for pay must follow EPA lead-safe rules once the disturbed area passes the federal thresholds; see our lead-safe painting page.