An old photo of Red City in the Androscoggin mill’s glory days. Then-owner Robert Gair had row houses built near the mills to accommodate an influx of employees. The area got the name Red City due to the choice of paint color. Photo courtesy of Nancy Shaw Larrivee
There have been mills on the Presumpscot River in the Little Falls section of South Windham since before the American Revolution. The first mill on the site was owned by New Marblehead settler William Knight. He operated a sawmill there with his two sons, Joseph and Nathan. The mill was run by the Knight family until 1832.
In 1846, Ichabod Leighton and Freeman Hardy took over the property and built a new sawmill. This mill was moved to a site on the Little River in Gorham in 1861. By 1875, the property was purchased by the Charles A. Brown Company who owned the water power on both sides of the Presumpscot. They built a large brick mill that made wood board, called the business Sebago Wood Board and employed about 70 workers who produced 10 tons of wood pulp and boards daily.
In 1899, the property was purchased by New York businessman Robert Gair. Gair had the distinction of being known as the man who invented the cardboard carton. His invention began as a mistake made by a careless pressman in his Brooklyn, New York, factory in 1879. The mistake ruined the press, but it gave Gair the idea that maybe cardboard could be printed and cut all by one machine. Previously, cutting of printed cardboard had to be done manually. Gair eventually developed a method to successfully mass produce cardboard boxes. The first company to adopt his new cartons was the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) for their Uneeda Biscuits in 1897. Other companies, such as Kellogg, soon followed suit.
This was good news for his Androscoggin Pulp Company mill in South Windham. In the summer of 1906, “The Paper Box Maker” magazine wrote, “The Androscoggin Pulp Company is about to build an extensive addition to its mill in South Windham, Maine. The new mill will be built adjoining the present mill … It will be made of brick, two stories and nearly 300 feet long.” The magazine also indicated that Gair would build row houses close by to accommodate the increased number of employees he’d be hiring.
These family dwellings later became known as Red City because the mill had them all painted red. Lifelong Windham resident and Windham Historical Society member, Carroll McDonald, recalled that mill village of 12 houses in the 1930s.
“People who lived in those homes considered themselves lucky, especially during the Depression. They could walk or ski to work and because they were the property of the mill, they were maintained by the company, even the grounds,” McDonald said.
You can see the remnants of the little village on High and Androscoggin streets, right off of Depot Street today.
Despite a devastating fire in 1912, by 1921, there were 400 people employed at the Androscoggin mill. In the 1940s, the mill began producing steel and was known as the Keddy Mill. It was damaged by fire in 1954 and then again in 1970, when it was abandoned. Some of the property was used by Rich Tool and Die Co. until 1993, but the mill itself remained vacant.
In 2010, the owner of the mill, Hudson Realty Capital, developed a new plan to bring it back to life. They had had a plan for years that included demolishing the mill and building condominiums, but this was no longer possible. They proposed that the town of Windham should purchase and take over the demolition of the old mill and they would then develop the 8.5-acre area. Since the cleanup effort that included riverbank restoration, environmental cleanup of asbestos, petroleum and PCB pollution, plus demolition costs was estimated at roughly $3 million, the town was skeptical of the idea. At an impasse, the mill remains abandoned to this day.
Haley Pal is a Windham resident and an active member of the Windham Historical Society. She can be contacted at haleypal@aol.com.
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