Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Slade Spice Mill
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1972. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“Slade Spice Mill is a historic tide mill located in Revere, Massachusetts listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Originally built for the use of the community to grind locally grown corn, it passed hands until becoming the property of the D&L Slade Company, a prominent spice company.”
Wikipedia article Slade Spice Mill, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 206 National Register listings in Suffolk County · listed in 1972 · category: Structure · one of 5 National Historic Landmarks in Suffolk County.
National Register reference number.09000709- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
The Post-Oflfice of Revere (North Chelsea) was established July 'I'i, 184(i, the first Postmaster being; Joseph H. Fenno, who served a community of about 750 persons. He was succeeded l:)y William Fenno, Hatch Crocker, George Newcomb, and James L. Wiggin, the latter being the last of the independent Postmasters at Revere. June 1, 1875, Revere became a Boston vStation, and free delivery was introduced in a Town that covered (August 1, 1892) about 3,540 acres, with a population of about 1,750 on July 1, 1875, and U,000 in 1892.
Winthrop, set off from North Chelsea (Revere) in 1853, was named after Deane Winthrop. The Post-Office was established February 2, 1853, and has had but one chief, Warren Belcher having been Postmaster up to May :]1, 1875, and head of the Station since. His allowance in 1855 was $17.17; the surplus, $5.84; the community served, less than 500. The Census of 1870 reports the population of Winthrop at 532. It is now about 3,500 (August 1, 18'.t2), and the area, 980 acres. Winthrop has had free delivery since June 1, 1875, when it became a jjart of postal Boston. It had been a part of municipal Boston up to 173!).
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 40 fires within 5 miles of Slade Spice Mill between
2003 and 2020, burning about 20 acres in total. None started naturally. 2 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
16
Debris and open burning
12
Smoking
5
Recreation and ceremony
4
Arson/incendiarism
2
Misuse of fire by a minor
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 15,298 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Slade Spice Mill between 1810 and
1975: 6,953 Plantae, 3,846 Fungi, 2,692 Animalia, 1,281 Chromista, 227 Bacteria, 180 Protozoa, 119 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, A B Seymour, A C Gibson and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
12 workings within 5 miles of Slade Spice Mill: 7 plants, 2 past producers, 2 producers, 1 unknown.
9 still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Lead, Gypsum-Anhydrite, Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Revere, the town this property stands in, in 26 storm reports between 1998 and 2023: 9 flood, 8 thunderstorm wind, 3 hail, 3 flash flood.
The reports record 1 death. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A roof was blown off a house on Winthrop Parkway in Revere. In addition, a tree, large limbs, and wires were downed by thunderstorm winds in Winthrop. The tree and branches were downed onto cars.
At 720 AM EST in Revere, a car was trapped in one foot of flooding on State Route 1A near the East Boston line. At 742 AM EST, amateur radio reported a flooded basement on Curtis Road. At 747 AM EST, three cars were reported trapped in flood waters on the Revere Beach Parkway.
In Revere, eighteen inches of water flooded Bell Circle. In Boston, the intersection of Columbia Road and Quincy Street flooded with one car stuck in the flood waters. Brookline Avenue was flooding near the Riverway. In West Roxbury, the VFW Parkway flooded near the high school.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
3,297 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Slade Spice Mill, situated on the Mill Creek, a tributary of the Chelsea River, extends into the water southwest from the land, with the street entrance on the northeast side. Here there is an open space originally paved for the use of wagons and now used for trucks. Beyond the narrow southwest end of the building, the dam, now greatly reduced in size by storms, extends across Mill Creek. Revere Beach Parkway is about 25 feet to the northeast. The dam is rapidly deteriorating and it, in conjunction with the Mill Pond, is no longer used as a power source. The large mill building, in excellent condition, is still used to grind and mix spices. This is not the original building. The first structure, a grist mill, was constructed on this site c. 1734, destroyed in 1795 and cebuilt c. 1823.
It was burned in 1885, 1901 and 1902, each time rebuilt on the same spot. Some of the early timbers evidently were re-used as there is evidence of charring in existing interior supports. The pre-1901 structures were two stories high and originally there were only two mill water wheels (turbines) as versus the later four. The three story building is divided into two sections by a brick fire wall which extends across its entire width. The main section where the grinding and mixing takes place is 33 feet by 85 feet; the storage section, 27 feet by 45 feet, is located on the land end to the northeast.
In the northeast corner of the main area is an interior elevator, capped by a small enclosure above roof level: The frame building is covered by wooden shingles with asphalt shingles on the elongated hip roof.
The Slade Spice Mill in Revere is one of the two remaining mills in Massa- chusetts which were tide powered; the other is now inoperative and rebuilt as a residence. The D. & L. Slade Spice Company, the oldest producing spice company in the United States, began operations on this site in 1827 under the management of Henry Slade who first ground only corn and snuff. Ten years later Henry's sons, David and Levi, instigated the grinding of cinnamon which they delivered in barrels to local housewives and later to grocers in Boston. This proved so popular that the company expanded into grinding and packaging all spices. While the grinding and mixing still takes place in the Revere mill, in later years the packaging has been done in the Slade Company's Boston headquarters on State Street.
The prosperous company was owned and operated by a member of the Slade family for nearly 150 years. Only recently has an outsider taken over the presidency. The location, first used as a mill site in 1734 for grinding corn, was intrinsic to the operation of the mill by providing the tide which supplied the mill with power. The Slade Company used this means of operation until c. 1930 (by then combined with electrical power), unusually late for this type of mill. The engineering significance of the Slade Mill lies in the fact that it used one of the earliest of the horizontal (turbine) water wheels, powered by the release of dammed water and depending on tidal action which allowed the mill stones to move during a part of each day.
A few original parts of the machinery remain in the mill today, evidently having escaped the many fires. (see Physical Appearance statement) The military significance of the Slade Spice Mill is rather indirect.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 09000709, 11 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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