Cumberland Mills Historic District

About this property

The S. D. Warren Paper Mill is a paper mill on the Presumpscot River in Westbrook, Maine. It is now owned by SAPPI Limited, a South African paper concern. It is one of Westbrook's major employers. The mill complex and former worker and management housing associated with the mill's operation in the 19th century were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 as the Cumberland Mills Historic District. The Warren paper mill is a large sprawling industrial complex spanning the Presumpscot River just north of Cumberland Street in central eastern Westbrook. A paper mill was established on this site in the 1730s, when it was a rural and fairly unpopulated area. In 1854, that small paper mill, in the soon-to-be established town of Westbrook, was purchased for $28,000 by Samuel D. Warren, known as S. D. Warren, uncle of George W. Hammond, who also worked there. The mill was named Grant, Warren and Company. In that year, the mill was only running two paper machines and had a production output of about 3,000 pounds of paper per day. Nine years later in 1863, an additional machine was added to the mill, and the production increased to 11,000 pounds per day. In 1854, paper was made by beating down rags and using the pulp from the rags. In 1867, after the mill changed its name to S. D. Warren Paper Mill Company, Warren decided to add wood fibers with rags fibers for paper. It was the first mill in the United States to do so. The mill became the largest in the world. By 1880, the mill produced 35,000 pounds of paper per day. Warren died in 1888 and was succeeded by his son, also Samuel D. Warren II, who managed the business until his death in 1910. The mill continued to grow through the 20th century, employing close to 3,000 Westbrook residents. Scott Paper Company diversified its operations through the purchase of S. D. Warren in 1967. Scott Paper Company operated the S.D. Warren Company as a wholly owned subsidiary until 1994, when it sold this leading producer of lightweight and heavyweight coated papers. In 1995, SAPPI Limited, a paper company based in South Africa paid $300 million for the mill and outsourced most of the work in the mill to South Africa. The mill now only employs about 300 people, but continues to be a presence in the city of Westbrook. The mill property and a number of surrounding properties were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Included in this listing were the mill itself, a row of Shingle style worker housing on Brown Street (from designs by John Calvin Stevens and Andrew Jackson Downing), and the elaborate Queen Anne Victorian home of Warren's son John, located across Cumberland Street from the mill.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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