The Mill Museum’s Buildings and Grounds: A Historic Site
The Windham Textile & History Museum (also known as the Mill Museum) was founded in 1989 in Willimantic, a former industrial borough located in the Town of Windham in Windham County, CT. At that time, the Museum acquired ownership of two buildings and grounds that had been part of a factory complex once owned by the American Thread Company.
Dunham Hall
The larger of the two buildings, known as Dunham Hall, is a three-story structure, mostly constructed in 1877. Originally, the first two floors of this structure had been the company store for the Willimantic Linen Company, the predecessor of the American Thread Company. The third floor had been a library for the WLC’s workers, their families, and other members of the community.
When ATCO purchased the entire plant from the WLC in 1898, it converted the lower two floors of Dunham Hall into its principle office building.
Dugan Mill
The second building, known today as Dugan Mill after Jonathan Dugan, was originally a one-story-and-basement brick structure erected by the WLC in 1877 as a warehouse. In the first decade of the twentieth century, ATCO added a brick second floor, designed as the headquarters of the Company’s American Fire Brigade. In the 1920s, ATCO disbanded the fire brigade and completely remodeled the second floor (accessible only from Union Street) as a meeting hall, with adjunct kitchen, coatroom, and toilet.
When the Museum acquired these buildings, it made further, extensive renovations. In most cases, these renovations altered the original uses of the spaces to more traditional museum uses. Only three spaces remained mostly unaltered by the Museum in 1989: the second floor of the Dugan Mill (which the Museum has restored to its 1920s appearance as a meeting room, although with the addition of modern ADA-compliant restrooms), the library reading room on the third floor of Dunham Hall, and the basement of the Dugan Mill building. (Because of water seepage from Carey Hill, the basement of the Dugan Mill building is usable only as a furnace room and very rough storage.)
In the late 1990s, for financial reasons, the ownership of both buildings and the grounds were transferred to the Town of Windham.
The Museum’s gardens are lovingly maintained by the Windham Garden Club.