Thomas Kay Woolen Mill Salem, Oregon
National Register of Historic Places Data
Thomas Kay Woolen Mill has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places with the following information, which has been imported from the National Register database and/or the Nomination Form . Please note that not all available data may be shown here, minor errors and/or formatting may have occurred during transcription, and some information may have become outdated since listing.
- National Register ID
- 73001579
- Date Listed
- May 8, 1973
- Name
- Kay, Thomas, Woolen Mill
- Address
- 260 12th St., SE
- City/Town
- Salem
- County
- Marion
- State
- Oregon
- Category
- district
- Creators
- Pugh, Walter D.
- Level of Sig.
- national
- Years of Sig.
- 1896; 1904; 1925
- Areas of Sig.
- INDUSTRY; ARCHITECTURE
Description
Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.
Located on the eastern edge of Willamette University campus, the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill property is livened by a water course and large oak trees. The facade of the mill is the focal point of a park-like corridor through the campus which is created by the mill stream. The major component of the property (the mill and its warehouse, dye house, picker house and other back buildings) is to be partially restored as a museum of wool technology by the non-profit Mission Mill Museum Association.
The Thomas Kay Woolen Mill is built according to traditional rectilinear industrial plant plan. It is a two and a half story brick and timbers-framed structure with a basement of cement and rubble masonry salvaged from the predecessor mill. Its dimensions are roughly 60 by 183 feet, including a 36-foot extension to the rear, or east end. A typical section, from basement floor to ridge of the roof, is about 55 feet, 1 1/2 inches in height. The gable ends are oriented west to east. The main entrance is located in the west face, which is organized into five bays and is finished by a kind of corbel chain beneath the eaves. The longitudinal elevations are composed of 16 bays set off by brick piers. The additions of 1898 and 1925 increased the number of bays on the north and south sides to 20. Openings have segmental brick arch heads and double-hung sash windows.
Company minutes show that there were three major periods of development and expansion at the mill. The first of these took place in 1898 during the mining boom and after the destruction of the Company's mill at Waterloo by fire made it necessary to combine all operations in the mill at Salem. The second period of alterations and additions occurred in 1904 when fuel oil supplanted wood as an auxiliary fuel for heating and dyeing. The third period of development came in 1925 when a new boiler room and other additions were constructed.
The Kay Mill was designed to accommodate three sets of cards, and housed four. By 1915 twenty-eight looms were operating, The mill was fitted with an hydraulic elevator, and there were also two large pumps for fire-fighting and an Edison dynamo to generate electric light. By the First World War period the complex included the detached office and storage buildings, a 15,000 gallon Redwood water tank, the main mill building with automatic sprinkler system, a single-story extension for dry finishing; a boiler room, picker house, carpenter and machine shop, housing for a turbine water wheel; a dye house with drug and drying rooms, two wool warehouses, an oil and bleach house, and a shoddy and wool storage house. Most of the complex has remained intact to the present day.
Statement of Significance
Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.
On the Pacific Coast, the mechanized woolen industry dates from 1857,
when the first full textile factory, the Willamette Woolen Manufacturing Company, was opened in Salem. Through most of the rest of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, woolen manufacture was a vital part of Salem's economy.
The Thomas Kay Woolen Mill Company was founded in 1889 by native-born
Englishman Thomas Kay, Squire Farrar, and C. P. Bishop. The existing mill, built to replace a frame structure destroyed by fire in 1895, was completed without delay in 1896. For a time it was the largest plant of its type in the state, and it was the longest-lived woolen manufactory ever established in Salem. Until its sale to the Mission Mill Museum Association in 1965, it had been under continuous ownership and management by the family-controlled Thomas Kay Woolen Mill Company.
The mill and its subsidiary structures are virtually unique survivals
in the Pacific Northwest of industrial type-specimens based on English and Atlantic seaboard models, The Oregon City Woolen Mill in Oregon City, reconstructed after a fire in 1873, is still standing, but having been used as a warehouse for some years, it lacks a full complement of line shafting and equipment. The Thomas Kay Woolen Mill is one of the few known plants in North America capable of demonstrating an entire manufacturing process by direct-drive water power. Its detached dye house is a rare resource, for its type is usually the first to be supplanted by modern improvements.
The mill's designer, Walter D. Pugh (1863-1942), was hired to pattern
the plans after the mill at Waterloo which the Company had acquired two
years before the fire. Pugh appears to have begun his career in Salem around 1880 as a carpenter-builder. Within a decade or more, which included association with the Salem firm of McCauley and Wickersham, Pugh was the Capitol City's prominent architect. Shortly after the turn of the century began to recieve commissions from the State of Oregon. He designed the recently-razed Salem City Hall which was erected between 1893 and 1897. Contractors for the mill were John Gray and Henry Lukers.
The Kay mill processed Oregon-grown wool stock, and produced finished
suitings, flannels, cassimeres, tweeds, and blankets. The goods produced by the Company's mills in Salem and Waterloo were distributed first to jobbers for fashioning, and then to retailers for marketing, principally in Portland and San Francisco. The Kay mill in Salem produced the first bolt of worsted goods west of the Mississippi in November, 1896. Kay and his oldest son, Thomas B. Kay, then assistant manager, returned to the East to purchase new machinery for worsteds, principally looms from North Andover, Massachusetts, and to recruit technicians. The Klondike gold rush and steady mining activity elsewhere in the Northwest created a demand for mackinaws, flannels, and knitted socks.
Although the mill was already geared full time to fill Pacific Coast orders, in 1897 Thomas B. Kay was sent to New York, where he briefly attempted to develop and expand the Eastern market. It transpired that the regional market was stable enough.
The mill a[t] Waterloo which the Company had purchased in 1894 to absorb bed and camp blanket orders, burned in 1898. Subsequent expansion of the Salem mill and the pressure of an enlarged market made the scope of the Company's operation second only to that of the Oregon City Woolen Mill on the entire West Coast.
