This complex was the largest producer of marine hardware in the United States

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Wilcox, Crittenden Mill was the largest producer of marine hardware in the United States, with a manufacturing history that spanned the era of sail to nuclear power. The factory complex contains three early-twentieth-century brick and masonry buildings (1901-1917), each used for the specialized processes utilized for the production of marine hardware: casting, forging, galvanizing, and machining, and the oldest surviving textile mill in Middletown, built in 1814, which served as the company's office.

Like other successful industries founded in the nineteenth century, Wilcox, Crittenden Mill followed a familiar historical pattern. An extended formative period as little more than a cottage industry was followed by rapid growth and development. Diversification and expansion in the twentieth century required a major building program. Until the company was absorbed by a conglomerate which eventually led to its closing, it had been controlled and directly managed by one family for more than a century.

William Walter Wilcox (1825-1903) was the driving force behind the company during the nineteenth century. Capitalizing on another man's invention of a brass sail grommet, a product which revolutionized the sailmaking industry, within ten years he was well-established in the ships' chandlery business. Because of his entrepreneurial skills as a manager, salesman, and inventor, the business survived to become an international leader in the marine hardware industry.

At first, journeymen sailmakers were reluctant to accept the grommet innovation, recognizing the threat to their livelihood. Before this time all sails used rope reinforcement for the grommet holes. Frequent Repair and replacement of sails was necessary. Recognizing that more reliable ships' hardware would become a necessity on the faster sailing ships of the day, especially the clippers that traveled around Cape Horn to California and China, Wilcox aggressively marketed the new product. Rejecting the custom of using "runners" (traveling salesmen who marketed on consignment), he made personal visits to the sail lofts of all the shipbuilding ports along the East Coast to demonstrate the new grommet.

He was so successful that the hand presses used to stamp out the grommets initially could not keep up with the demand. After Wilcox added new hardware of his own invention to the product line, including a sail thimble of malleable galvanized iron and an improved spur grommet, a power source was a necessity. In 1857 space was leased in the basement of an old textile mill (Mill A), where an existing waterwheel could be utilized.

The business prospered under several names until in 1869 it became Wilcox, Crittenden and Company, a co-partnership consisting of Wilcox and his brother-in-law, Albert Crittenden, E. Bound Chaffee, and Homer Churchill. Wilcox had married Elizabeth Crittenden, Albert's older sister, in 1835. Their son William W. Wilcox, Jr. (1862-1940), joined the company in 1885, becoming president when his father retired in 1891. His son and namesake was born in 1901 and assumed control in 1940.

The company's growth under Wilcox Sr.'s leadership was phenomenal. By 1885 it was serving international markets, with an exclusive contract with the British Navy, supplying marine hardware for both steam and sailing ships. Wilcox, who had personally negotiated the Admiralty contract, arranged with Hipshaw and Bliss of Birmingham, England, to manufacture his patented hardware for the English and European markets. By the 1880s the company had built in rapid succession three additional buildings, all near the 1814 mill, and each used for the specialized processes needed to produce forged, molded, plated, or galvanized bimetallic brass, iron, and steel marine hardware. They included an iron and brass foundry (formerly Stroud's forge) with a blacksmith's shop, downstream from the original mill, the first machine and finishing shops north of the 1814 mill (they are no longer extant), and an extensive tinning and galvanizing shop built of wood which was supported by brick and stone piers over the ravine to the south. Products were shipped by steamboat from the riverport and after 1870 by rail. The company maintained its own livery stable for the teams of horses needed to pull the drays to deliver goods and pick up raw materials. A labor force of 200 were mainly skilled workers in the metal trades, such as machinists, galvanizers, tinners, and engravers. Although a few iron molders came from England, most of the employees were German immigrants who came to Middletown after the Civil War. They rented single and multi-family houses in the neighborhood built by entrepreneurial developers. The federal census schedules of the period indicate that their daughters as well as sons worked at Wilcox, Crittenden, the young men often as apprentices in their fathers' specialized trades. By the late nineteenth century, women were employed exclusively in the core room.

A disastrous fire occurred in 1907. The galvanizing and tinning shops collapsed with their heavy machinery into the ravine. The interior of the old textile mill, then used as office space, was damaged, destroying hardware patterns and some of the company records. Firefighting efforts were directed towards saving the new 1901 machine shop, Mill B, the only building untouched by the fire. Within a few months, the forge and galvanizing shop had been rebuilt at the new location (Mill C), and the interior of the office repaired.

Continuing as the national leader of the marine hardware business in the twentieth century, Wilcox, Crittenden made all types of ships' fittings, producing more than 8,000 items engineered for specialized uses, from grommets, swivels, and clews to steel anchors of 30 tons. The production line flowed in a logical sequence from Mill D through Mill C to the finishing and packing stages carried out in Mill B. A brief review of the processes carried out in the forging and galvanizing plant (Mi11 C) and the later iron and brass foundry illustrates the scope of the product line. The principal activities in Mill C were drop forging and hot dip galvanizing. In the drop forging process, steel and bronze articles are hot formed in dies under heavy hammers which shape and treat the metal at the same time. Products requiring tensile strength and shock resistance, such as turnbuckles and claw or drag anchors, were produced by the company with this process. Hot dip galvanizing is used to protect iron or steel from corrosion, especially from seawater. As the entire article was dipped in molten zinc, ten tons of molten zinc were kept available at all times for this process, Casting was used where the desired structural characteristic was resistance to compression, as in windlass bases and mushroom anchors. Custom cast marine hardware of iron, brass, and bronze was a specialty of Wilcox, Crittenden. On any given day on the pouring floor of the foundry (Mill D), as many as seven different compositions were cast.

Before the company dissolved in the 1970s, the firm provided marine hardware for both the merchant marine and the United States Navy in two world wars, and the new nuclear-powered submarines first being built in the 1950s. This period also saw the end of the Wilcox dynasty. W. W. Wilcox, III, the grandson of the original founder who took over after his father's retirement in 1940, died that same year at age 39. Phelps Ingersoll, who had been general manager since 1929, became president.

After World War II, Wilcox, Crittenden bought out A. B. Sands Co. (New Jersey), manufacturers of marine plumbing, and National Marine Lamp Company (Connecticut) to become the leader in these fields as well. The stock and equipment of both companies was moved to Middletown. The company diversified further by producing custom marine hardware for the pleasure boat industry, becoming renowned in yachting circles for the quality of its product.

North and Judd, hardware manufacturers in New Britain, bought the company in 1955 but maintained the Middletown plant as the Wilcox, Crittenden division. After North and Judd (still operating in Mill D) was absorbed as a subsidiary of Gulf and Western in the 1970s, Mills A and B were vacated. Mill C continued to operate as the New England Forge until it closed in 1980.

Site Description

The Wilcox, Crittenden Mill contains four brick and masonry industrial buildings dating from 1814 to 1917. Archaeological remains in the complex include two brownstone dams and the standing ruins of building foundations of brownstone and concrete. The complex is located in the historic industrial section of Middletown, occupying more than 16 acres of land along Pameacha Creek ravine. South Main Street (Route 17), which runs from north-south, divides the complex into two roughly triangular sections. The southwestern section is bounded on the south by Pameacha Avenue and Pameacha Pond, a former millpond for the complex, and on the west by Highland Avenue. The northeastern section is bounded by Burr Avenue on the north, Pameacha Creek on the south, and Mill Street to the east.

The mill complex is extensive. The buildings themselves cover more than 82,000 square feet of land. Two of them are located in the northeastern section. Mill A, an 1814 former textile mill constructed of brick (40' x 40') where the company began production, was later used as its office. Mill B, immediately to the north of this small building, also constructed of brick (60' x 247'), was built between 1901 and 1912 and served as the machine and finishing shop. Deep in the ravine to the south of these buildings is a functioning stepped brownstone dam with the remains of a foundation of the same material, running perpendicular to the dam at its northern end. Other standing ruins of foundations are located on both banks of the ravine immediately to the east of the dam.

Two other factories are located at either end of Pameacha Avenue in the southwestern section, which runs between South Main Street and Highland Avenue. The first (Mill C) is an extensive galvanizing and forge shop constructed of masonry block and concrete in 1907. The main block is 60 feet wide and extends for 350 feet from Pameacha Avenue along South Main Street to the north. Across the ravine of Pameacha Creek to the west is Mill D (42' x 80'), the last building constructed by the company, also of masonry block. It served as the brass molding shop and later as the brass and iron foundry. An extensive addition was added to the south and east sides of this building and extends along Pameacha Avenue. Constructed of brick (50' x 183'), it was built in the late 1930s. The millpond and dam which served the 1907 factory and possibly the 1917 foundry, as well, are located to the south across Pameacha Avenue approximately halfway between the two buildings. Two standing structures of concrete, roughly cylindrical in shape, are downstream of the dam at its northern end; a concrete structure that formerly contained the gate valve to control the flow of water to a race can be seen from the edge of the pond just above the dam.

The site of the Wilcox, Crittenden Mill has been used for industrial purposes since the seventeenth century. Because of the depth of the ravine and the steep slope of the terrain, it was the best natural mill site in Middletown. Originally the area was known as the South Farms, and the first gristmill in Middletown (ca. 1660) was located along the creek very near Mill A. Between this site and Middletown's main business district, a mile to the north, where the original settlement took place in 1651, were scattered farms on "the road to Derhant" (a colonial farming community to the south), today's South Main Street. In the nineteenth century, Mill Hollow, as the area came to be known, was the site of the first woolen textile mill in Middletown (Mill A). A spinning mill was founded here by John Watkinson, an English immigrant, to manufacture broad cloth.

During the nineteenth century, brownstone dams were constructed or enlarged across Pameacha Creek, forming three mill ponds. From south to north they were Pameacha Pond, the gristmill pond in the ravine, immediately to the east of South Main Street, and Stroud's Pond (no longer extant). Because of the rapid drop-off of the hollow, there was a differential of 40 feet between the upper and lower millponds. Where South Main Street crosses the ravine a modern steel and concrete bridge has replaced a nineteenth-century stone-arched bridge, which was still standing in 1948. Earlier, wood and iron structures bridged the ravine. The neighborhood surrounding the complex was also transformed in the nineteenth century, particularly after the Civil War. Although a few colonial farmhouses remained, most of the existing houses there were built in this period as rental housing for factory workers at Wilcox, Crittenden. By the time the company entered into its major twentieth-century building program, the neighborhood was fully established.

Mill A is currently vacant. A gable-roofed, two-and-a-half-story building with interior end chimneys (one is missing above the ridge), it displays tall windows with brownstone sills. The doors and some of the windows on the end elevations also have brownstone lintels. Most of the south gable wall remains in place, with the original window openings bricked in. The mill is supported by a brownstone rubble foundation, visible above grade at the north end of the facade. The removal of a late-nineteenth-century addition on the south side in 1982 has revealed the original form of the building. The cupola has been modified or replaced, but the wooden double-hung sash (four-over-four) set in segmental-arched openings are original.

Immediately to the north, the machine shop (Mill B), which is sited perpendicular to Main Street, is two stories in height at street level and four stories in height at the rear because of the slope of the land. This building, which was converted to residential use in 1983, has the typical design of a late-nineteenth-century mill with pilastered walls and evenly spaced fenestration. Its load-bearing brick walls of both sections (1901, 1918) are set on brownstone foundations. Along the north side, interior stone buttresses, which may date from an earlier (ca. 1880) building support a rubble wall in the basement of the older section. Along the north, south, and west elevations, the windows have fixed transoms set in segmental arches at the top floor. The sash and the transoms are modern replacements but their configuration is similar to the originals. A stair tower is located on the south side. A dentil course of brick defines the rake of the slightly pitched gable roof, and corbelled brickwork is displayed at the top of each window bay of the 1912 elevation. The older section displays exposed wooden rafter ends. On the South Main Street elevation, a piece of millstone, reputed to be from the original gristmill, was incorporated in the brick wall during construction. When the building was converted to residential use, the monitor of the roof was extended in width and the mill floors were divided into apartments. A 1958 reinforced concrete addition located on the north elevation below the grade of South Main Street is presently utilized as a parking garage for the tenants.

Mill C, the forge and galvanizing shop (no longer in use), is an extended one-story gable-roofed building with a clerestory monitor raised five feet along its length. Stuccoed, pilastered walls of cement, or cinder block, contain along the east elevation multi-paned stacked awning windows which extend the full height of the building. Most of the fenestration at the south end of this elevation has been modified by the addition of glass and concrete blocks in the original openings. The gable ends contain similar multi-paned windows which are irregularly spaced. The clerestory windows are presently covered with plywood. Large metal air scoops extend from the monitor roof above the galvanizing floor at the south end. Originally the interior of the entire building contained a steel framing system to support the roof and its monitor. The steel framing of the south section deteriorated from corrosion and was replaced in about 1940 by wood framing. Single brick piers provide the central support in the south end; several rows of steel columns are found in the north end. Both sections have earth and concrete floors. There have been several additions to the original factory. A one-story addition for packing and shipping was added to the south end by 1913. At the rear, a small wooden tinning room was extended out 40 feet at 90 degrees in the middle of the west wall. A low half-story addition along the west elevation of the north end of the building was raised a full story. By 1924, the existing double-pitched hip-roofed tower replaced an earlier ventilating tower (1913) for the galvanizing floor, one of the most distinctive features of the building. Also in 1924 an open loading dock, now enclosed, and a free-standing storage building were added to the rear. About 1950 the rear storage building was joined to the south end of the main block by a roof. A small corrugated iron building for office space was added to the north wall of the storage building.

The molding shop, Mill D, is similar to Mill C in its construction, although much smaller. Currently still used for industrial purposes, it too has a monitored roof and pilastered masonry block walls with tall metal-framed windows in each bay. The later brick addition has brick pilasters along the southern elevation on Pameacha Avenue. These bays are larger and contain metal framed, multi-paned windows with corbelling in each bay just below the roof line. After its construction, Mill D was used exclusively as a brass and iron foundry, and Mill C for forging and galvanizing.