The Lonaconing Silk Mill.....A 1957 Time Capsule

Slide 1

OK, When a couple of friends I know who photograph old abandoned places, told me about this shuttered Silk Mill in Lonaconing Maryland, It sounded rather interesting. It had been closed since1957, when the workers went on strike, and it sits in the same condition to this day.

Slide 2

So, we went and photographed it with a handful of other photographers from around the country, and then, well we had a bunch of photographs. When the opportunity came up to present here at PK, I went back, looked at these photos and said, there’s a visual story here that’s been lost for a long time and is begging to be told.

Slide 3

This place is tucked away in the Allegheny Foothills of western Maryland and sits just like it did on the day it closed, except now, it’s covered with overgrown vegetation, broken out and shattered windows…. it definitely does not look good! But…Back in the early 1900’s , this place used to employee up to 360 people.

Slide 4

The outside was rough, but when we got inside, Wow, this place was a time capsule out of 1957.....just how the workers left it. The paint was peeling, but there was personal stuff everywhere, just talking to us. In an eerie kind of way, you could almost feel the ghosts of the people that worked here.

Slide 5

A 1957 calendar still hangs, a worker’s tools and a milk bottle, an old pencil sharpener. And there was this green tint over everything as the light coming through the windows filtered through all the vegetation. There was a quick pop up thunderstorm storm hitting outside, so it kind of just made everything feel very surrealistic.

Slide 6

The place was massive. The roof leaked everywhere, Support timbers were sagging, I could tell it's was just a matter of time and this won’t be around anymore. It was built in 1906, and even then the work stopped for a few months over a labor dispute. I think labor issues seem to be a common thread that run through this mill.

Slide 7

I don’t know how silk thread is made, but I do know that raw silk is thrown, then twisted and wound. I suspect all the spindles, bobbins and pointy things played a big part. I learned a lot researching this project; for a while after the Pearl Harbor attack and the blockade that followed, we weren’t able to get raw silk from Japan, and that really hurt the mill.

Slide 8

These wooden spools (Called Bobbins) were everywhere, stacks and stacks of them, and they all had this deep wood grain that contrasted with the wood of the factory floor. As the silk thread was made, I'm pretty sure it all ended up on these 4” bobbins which were then shipped to market.

Slide 9

One of the photographers with us was a fire fighter in his day job. He kept looking up at the massive wood beam construction with this funny look on his face, he told me “if this place burned, we would just stand back. This would be a fire fighters worst nightmare when those big ole beams started coming down.

Slide 10

I found a hand-written note, probably vintage 1957, telling somebody on the next shift they had to wipe down the bobbin’s before using them. Somebody who was willing to go out on strike and risk their job for 5 Cents an hour probably wrote this note. It was these little things that put this whole plant closing into a more personal perspective.

Slide 11

Names on the machines and workplaces. Somebody named Andrea probably used to run this machine and this was probably her own little world. There was not a lot of automation back then, and even today, in spite of all the modern technology, a lot of the textile industry still depends on manual labor.

Slide 12

This might be possibly an old scheduling system. Maybe these tickets represent the jobs that are in process on the day they closed in July 1957? It looked like maybe these jobs did not ship, and if they didn't, you have to wonder if the customer ever knew what happened here in Lonaconing?

Slide 13

And then part of the tags possibly ended up on the machines they were supposed to run on? Its amazing that these tags are still hanging on this machine, but the years and the moisture have really taken their toll on them.

Slide 14

Somehow, this machine must have spooled the finished thread onto the bobbins. I don't think worker safety was an important thing back then, just cracking the work out. I don't think there were a lot of safety features on these machines. Looking at them, I’m betting they were pretty easy to get hurt on.

Slide 15

And then part of the tags possibly ended up on the machines they were supposed to run on? Its amazing that these tags are still hanging on this machine, but the years and the moisture have really taken their toll on them.

Slide 16

Another puzzling thing was that this place had not been trashed or hit by scrappers. I guess, being in such a small town like Lonaconing, population 1,250 for the last 20 or 30 years, and in the middle of nowhere does have some benefits. You can see that eerie green light again in the background here.

Slide 17

I found these items in the office on a radiator, 6 bottles of Coke for 25 cents, an old oil can and some stylish shoes. Again, pardon the pun, but this is the Real Thing. I'm sure antique collectors would relish this stuff, including even the radiator they sit on.or.

Slide 18

Buckets everywhere caught water from leaking roofs, and more water came in all the windows. This whole piece of history was just rotting away before our eyes. It was 2015 when we went there, and I believe it still stands like this for now. I feel lucky to be able to see a place like this, because at 1 time places like this were the fabric of the American industry.

Slide 19

In 1978, Herb Crawford purchased the former mill with the hope of restarting the factory's operations. Crawford attempted over the years to secure economic development to reuse the complex as a silk factory and numerous other ventures, but the expense was just to high. About 10 years ago, Herb discovered he could let groups of photographers pay him a fee to shoot the place for a couple of hours or even a day.

Slide 20

The last I heard, Herb had put away some $20,000 + to fix a roof that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Back on the outside again, its just another old building you might drive by on the way to work, or to go see when going to visit your family somewhere, but think, inside, there might just be the key to story long gone.